Gibson recently spoke with McKinsey’s Lydia The about how AI and machine learning can speed up drug discovery—and what it could mean for patients everywhere. An edited version of their conversation follows.
Lydia The: You were part of several biotech firms before you cofounded Generate Biomedicines. Tell us about Generate’s potential for revolutionizing medicine.
Molly Gibson: Generate is focused on transforming drug discovery in the protein therapeutics space. Instead of thinking about how to discover new molecules from natural processes and evolution, we use computers to learn the rules of proteins and how proteins function. We can then generate completely de novo molecules that do the things that we want so that we can create better, cheaper, safer drugs.