by Simon Smith
February 15, 2018
Don’t be deceived. John Baldoni may have 37 years’ experience in often conservative pharma. But he's not into incremental innovation. “I get ridiculed by this,” he says. “But within 3 years, I want to go from a drug target to a molecule in 12 months. That takes 5 to 6 years now. That’s what success looks like.”
Ambitious talk. But supported by action. I stumbled on Baldoni while researching pharma companies using AI for drug discovery. Despite the hype, I found only 16. Most dabble or share few details. But not GSK. It has a dedicated AI group, the “In silico Drug Discovery Unit” (formerly “Medicines Discovered Using Artificial Intelligence”). It's partners with several AI drug discovery startups. It gave data on 2 million compounds to a public-private AI consortium. And it’s open and bold about its vision…
