Comment by jcranmer
4 years ago
> The reality is that prohibitive factors in creating new drugs from compounds discovered similarly (by AI or other automated process) is almost entirely due to testing safety procedures and regulations
Most drug candidates fail because they don't work, not because of any regulatory procedure. About 50% of drug candidates that enter Phase III trials--the final clinical trial before approval--fail, and that's almost always because they failed to meet clinical endpoints (i.e., they don't do what they're supposed to do), and not because they're not safe (toxicity is Phase I trials).
That "not working" part has some nuance to it as well. How well do we predict ADME? Is there binding with some off target protein that makes it terrible? Maybe it just doesn't bind to the desired target at all.
Toxins don't have those constraints, its not even about regulation. Making something that's safe is way harder than making something that is not safe, purely because of the complexity involved in making the thing safe.