DeepMind Taps Into AI To Speed Up Drug Discovery Process

Of the many tropical diseases that have been plaguing the poverty-stricken population of underdeveloped and developing countries, Leishmaniasis is one. Its fatal form-- Visceral Leishmaniasis, affects more than three lakh people every year. However, drug discovery and development for the disease has been slow for reasons including lack of capital, the complexity of the procedure, and the time taken to determine the protein structure of pathogens.   Role of protein structure in drug discovery Protein is a complex chain of amino acids linked together in a unique pattern. Determining the chain of amino acids that form the protein is difficult. But what's more challenging is determining the pattern in which the protein folds over itself.  Figuring this out involves unde