MIT Technology Review’s “10 Breakthrough Technologies List of 2020” named Kebotix, a technology platform company for new chemicals and materials, as a key player in the field of AI-designed molecules.
The 19th edition of the list is featured in the March/April issue of MIT Technology Review, which went online today (Feb. 26). The print edition hits newsstands on March 3.
In citing AI-designed molecules as among the top technologies predicted to have a major impact on civilization, the respected publication noted that “the ability of deep learning and other AI tools to find novel molecules with desirable properties will transform drug discovery.”
MIT Technology Review identified that one reason a new drug costs about $2 billion on average is the difficulty of finding promising novel molecules.
“Kebotix is currently addressing this very challenge, using adaptive optimization to gain more information and using fewer experiments and less materials instead of testing sets of predefined parameters as in the traditional design of experiment (DOE) approach,” said Dr. Jill S. Becker, Kebotix CEO. “Like so much of our work, this effort aligns and supports several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Advancing the goal of ‘Good Health and Well-Being’ brings even more pride to Kebotix.”
By employing an advanced proprietary AI-driven optimization algorithm, part of ChemOS™, Kebotix found suitable conditions and optimal assay performances to detect viruses with a fraction of the usual measurements required and all the while running simultaneously. For one current partner, this output was sufficient for Kebotix to achieve a five-fold reduction in costs for lab supplies. More importantly, Kebotix reduced the time to design the experiments to detect viruses from 49 hours to only nine hours, giving 40 more hours to save lives. The next step – using Kebotix’s AI for fast and smart selection of new treatments – dramatically reduces time spent on testing treatments that the AI algorithms predict will not work.
“Speed saves lives – our AI allows us to do that,” Becker said, echoing remarks made by Editor-at-Large David Rotman in the MIT Technology Review story.
“AI promises to make the development of new medicines far faster and more effective, and is an important new tool in the hunt for better drugs,” Rotman commented on behalf of the journalists and editors who dedicated a year’s worth of research for the 2020 list.
Other technologies making the “10 Breakthrough Technologies List of 2020” included satellite mega-constellations, climate-change attribution, hyper-personalized medicine, anti-aging drugs and digital money.
About Kebotix
Kebotix (www.kebotix.com) is a platform company for chemicals and materials ushering in a new age of high-speed innovation using artificial intelligence and robotic automation. Kebotix has built the world’s first self-driving lab for materials discovery powered by AI and robotics. Kebotix, founded in 2017, is accelerating the exploration, discovery, use and production of new molecules and materials that can solve the world’s most urgent problems.
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