Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold has already revolutionized scientists’ understanding of proteins. Now, the ability of the platform to design safe and effective drugs is about to be put to the test.

Isomorphic Labs, a UK-based biotech spinoff of Google DeepMind, will soon begin human trials of drugs designed by its Nobel Prize-winning AI technology. “We're gearing up to go into the clinic,” Isomorphic Labs president Max Jaderberg said at WIRED Health in London. “It's going to be a very exciting moment as we go into clinical trials and start seeing the efficacy of these molecules.”

Since its release, AlphaFold has been able to predict the structure of virtually all known proteins and has been used by more than 2 million people from 190 countries. The breakthrough earned Hassabis and Jumper the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2024. In 2024, DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs released AlphaFold 3, which advanced scientists’ understanding of proteins even further. It moved beyond modeling proteins in isolation to predicting other important molecules, such as DNA and RNA, and their interactions with proteins.

Isomorphic Labs has formed partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis to work together on AI drug discovery and is advancing its own pipeline of new medicines in oncology and immunology. “The exciting thing about the molecules that we're designing is because we have so much more of an understanding about how these molecules work, we've engineered them to be very, very potent,” Jaderberg told the audience at WIRED Health.

Its mission is to ‘solve all disease.’ It's a crazy mission, but they really mean it. We say it with a straight face, because we believe this should be possible.