STAT+: If AI invents a new medicine, who gets the patent?
Pharma and biotech companies are increasingly using AI to discover and make medicines. So Congress is asking: Does that mean AI can be an inventor on a patent?
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are increasingly using artificial intelligence to discover and make drugs and therapeutics. Congress on Wednesday asked the question: Does that mean AI can be an inventor on a patent?
AI models can already look for patterns in old clinical trial data, look at images of cells and quantify changes in them, or virtually test whether drug candidates will dock in a certain receptor — all with tools that aren’t that different from Excel or a calculator.
But using generative AI in drug development — proposing new molecules and antibodies that don’t already exist — brings up questions about whether that AI is then the inventor of that drug, and if so, whether that molecule can be patented in the U.S. Novartis, for example, is already using a generative chemistry AI platform that was able to generate 282 antimalarial drug candidates, two of which seem to fight malaria without harming other cells on par with existing medicines.
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