Inside the similar laboratories, Spinoff from Google DeepMind

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By [email protected]


Dimis Hasabis, co -founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel Bize in Chemistry 2024, attends the Summit of the AI ​​in Grand Palais in Paris, France, February 10, 2025.

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

On a rare sunny day in London in Google Deepmind office, Colin Murdoch saw the banking deposit from the employer.

He was not his salary. Google was investing in starting start.

The emerging company was Isomorphic Laboratory, an emerging company for secret artificial life sciences that came out of Google DeepMind after one of the largest biological breakthroughs in the past fifty years. The check came in November 2021, and Murdoch was in the founding team.

As a great president of DeepMind, Murdoch has been assigned to find DeepMind Innovations in artificial intelligence research. With isomorphic, Murdoch wanted zero in the capabilities of Alphafold2, which is the artificial intelligence system with the ability to predict protein structures.

The viral program was developed by DeepMind in 2020 and helped solve the puzzle -filled biology for 50 years. If it is properly applied, he has the ability to find new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. The system will continue to win Nobel Prize In chemistry.

Murdoch and founder of Isomorphic Demis Hassabis also helped to make a decision on the ultimate goal: “Solving all diseases” by discovering the drugs that Amnesty International works.

“When Alphafold came, I think Dimis looked at this and thought,” Well, what can we do with Alphafold? “Really, this was an indication that we could start applying artificial intelligence in this world of drug detection.”

Hassabis remains with Isomorphic as CEO, runs at one time DeepMind, Google at the forefront of the research company’s efforts to compete in the continuous AI race in the technology industry. While Isomorphic is an independent Google Parent unit alphabetHassabis dual roles reflect the interlocking relationship between the two parties.

Isomorphic at all did not reveal the amount of Google’s investment at the beginning in 2021. But last month, the company imprisoned its first external financing on a $ 600 million tour led by Thrive Capital with the participation of GV, previously known as Google Ventures, as well as additional capital from Alphabet. Through new capital, ISOMORPHIC plans to expand biology and add an account to run its work in artificial intelligence.

The drug discovery market is expected to arrive 71 billion dollars At value by 2025, Amnesty International continues to change industry.

On average, it may take between 10 and 15 years – and sometimes more than 2 billion dollars – In order to make drugs from the bench to the final approval of the Food and Drug Administration. It also costs hundreds of millions of dollars to conduct clinical trials on possible new drugs. For drugs that fail in those experiments, this is a cost of sinking. But the use of artificial intelligence in the discovery of drugs can make the process more efficient and less expensive, which leads to more successful drugs that make them on the market.

Since its foundation, Isomorphic has grown to more than 200 people and created partnerships with Eli Lily and NovartisTwo of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. They pay equal shape, partly, to help ensure that their long -term bets bear fruit. The two partnerships It includes Both payments provided and teacher and “have the ability to have a value of about $ 3 billion for similar laboratories,” according to the company, minus potential royalties resulting from future drug sales.

Google DeepMind and ISOMORPHIC on Wednesday allowed Alphafold3 to the scientific community for non -commercial use, through Google Cloud. Isomorphic said the system can “predict the structures and interactions of all life particles.” “This goes beyond the prediction of proteins for DNA, RNA, ties and much more, which is important to develop drug detection and biological understanding.”

Using a “solution” solution

Murdoch, 46, wanted to be a doctor to grow up, but his struggle prompted him to give up the idea in favor of technology and engineering. Deepmind in protein structures has restored interest in medicine.

Announcing Alphafold2 in 2020 – a step from the first version in 2018 – took the world of life sciences through the storm. This is because proteins are one of the basic building blocks of cells, which leads to all chemical reactions that make up life as we know. Whatever the form they fold, almost endless possibilities, decide its function.

If you can predict the presence of protein shape, you can predict its function, and since research indicates that many diseases are affected by incorrectly folded proteins, research has made waves.

Soon after the launch of Alphafold2, Murdoch and Hasabis collected a group of DeepMind employees to explore the ways in which the artificial intelligence system can be used. After several months, they identified the areas in which they believed that artificial intelligence could make a difference in the discovery of drugs, and they put an action plan for Isomorphic that they put in the alphabet.

Murdoch said that one of the parents from Google “I think it was a tremendous idea.”

Colin Murdoch, chief business official, Dibmond, at the lead center during the first day of the 2022 web summit at Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

John Nonan Sportsfile | Gety pictures

Alphabet decided to rotate around ISOMORPHIC from DeepMind, which leads to starting with the use of Alphafold technology to provide vital medical breakthroughs and advanced drug design programs.

In early 2022, the team was made up of more than ten people, working outside a temporary office in King’s Cross, the Technology Center in London.

Since then, Isomorphic has been working in a semi -health mode, while mostly maintaining her work and progress. In recent years, Isomorphic representatives said that the company was not “completely ready to share our progress so far”, and that the executives were moving away from media interviews as the company built its technology and added talent.

Deepmind employees who were working on Isomorphic remain after Spinout. Hassabis and Murdoch were hiring a zero team. They started with C-SUITE: Senior Technology officials, great artificial intelligence staff, chief scientific officials and senior officials. From there, they rented experts in treatments and machine learning.

“We have put a large amount of energy and effort to build what we call a multidisciplinary culture that combines these two types of experience,” Murdoch said. “This combination of artificial intelligence and drug detection is very necessary to do what we do.”

Miracle chess, Fares and Ai ‘Rockstar’

Hassabis, 48, is one of the most important people in Google.

He participated in the establishment of DeepMind in 2010 with the aim of building “AI for general purposes”, which is It sold the start starting to Google in 2014It was reported that between 400 million dollars and 650 million dollars. Deepmind has been one of the main AI research sections of Google for years.

But this was raised in late 2022, when Openai Chatgpt Chatbot released, which presses in the era of obstetric artificial intelligence and forced Google to store on the accelerator.

The importance of DeepMind and Hassabis has increased within Google since then.

Google Deepmind with Google’s brainAnother research unit of artificial intelligence in the search company, to become Google DeepMind in April 2023. Hassabis was used to lead the joint section. More power turned last October, when the Gemini application, which includes Google’s Amnesty International’s direct products, was from Google, from Google, I moved under Google DeepMind umbrella.

Through sharp changes in DeepMind since 2023, Hassabis has continued in its other executive role in ISOMORPHIC.

“All artificial intelligence talents in the company, led by Demes, have advanced research talent, (and) many of these people can go in any laboratory of artificial intelligence-it was not necessary to have a vibrant-focused talent,” said Vince Hanseche. A partner at Thrive Capital said.

Hanks is described as “unusually private businessman.”

People who knew the Husaybis for years describe it as the way they will get from celebrities, and they express dread, respect and slight air from the mystery that they know. he Chess miracleNobel Prize winner, until 2023, Fares – Sir Dimis Hasabis.

The Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Dimis Hasabis, receives his award from the King of Swedish Karl Gustav at the Nobel Prize ceremony at KonsretHuset in Stockholm, Sweden December 10, 2024.

Pontus Lundahl | TT | By Reuters

Krishna Yosanant, the administrative partner of GV, said that the Hassabis meeting at Oxford University years ago was like a “corporate rock”. Indeed, Hassabis’s achievements were well known, but he remained friendly and did not resort to Jargon to talk about his work in artificial intelligence.

“Before getting DeepMind, even at the time, he was thinking about a mindset about breakthroughs,” Yosanant said.

GV in Isomorphic has invested due to the start -up force in both artificial intelligence and treatments. Although GV invests in many areas of biotechnology and technology, ISOMORPHIC is unique to hit Yisten

“In biotechnology, you perform these experiments, sometimes the experiments do not work, and sometimes you do it. When you do it, you are moving forward in some way.” “In technology, it has not always been prepared in this way. Often, we signed the next customer? Have we developed this feature?”

“It is not customary to see a person who deals somewhat from the same approach (biotechnology) in technology,” said Yosanant. “Demes, according to his appreciation, was doing it in this way for a long time.”

Hassabis CNBC told a statement that he believed that improving human health is one of the most important cases of use of Amnesty International.

“We have this amazing tool that can finally open some of the biggest puzzles around the disease and help us overcome it,” Hasabis said in the statement. “The idea of ​​the future where people are healthier for a longer period, and this really raises me.”

Expanding operations and adding an account

Now that Isomorphic has started opening up, the startup says it plans to use its first external financing to expand biology.

Currently, Isomorphic can use its engine for general purposes to quickly design small molecules drugs-imagine a pill that you can take as a treatment-but expanding biology opens the potential range of diseases that can start starting to treat, since biology is usually injections instead of birth control pills.

“We focus primarily on cancer and immunity through our internal programs, so we will be able to take them further, and we manage these programs faster and add programs.”

Isomorphic will also focus on finding use for alphafold3.

The company’s new financing will also be used to calculate a major problem in the area of ​​artificial intelligence, as companies need all GPU processing units that they can access. Isomorphic will need to create more models to run on a larger scale with more attached data, both on the artificial intelligence side and treatment.

“It is useful to build a full life science company-and this company must invest in the account, and they have to invest in talents, and they must invest in data, and they must invest in the development of assets,” said Hansis of Thrive.

Google's fate depends on this man: Demis Hassanis



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