Artificial Intelligence And Cracking The Code To Cancer

Abraham Heifets of Atomwise is using AI to speed up the development of medications targeted at specific cancer cells

- Noah Miller

IN ANTICIPATION OF THE 50TH Anni­versary of NASA astronauts landing on the moon, Newsweek is spotlighting pioneers in science and technology, highlighting their very own moonshots and how they hope to change the world.

Abraham Heifets is the CEO and co-founder of Atomwise, a biotech company using patented deep learning artificial intelligence technology to predict and discover which drugs will be better, safer and more potent for cancer patients.

Q What is your moonshot?

A To make novel, better and safer drugs, with the ultimate goal to get medicines into the hands of patients faster.

Q How do you do that?

A We’re trying to solve how you modify a cell that’s in the runaway disease process and figure out what’s causing a cell to keep growing and dividing. Think of proteins in your body as machines on the assembly line. If the machine governing cell growth and division breaks and goes haywire, then the cell will keep growing and dividing. That’s a tumor and how cancer happens. If you see a machine going haywire, you’d want to throw in a monkey wrench so the machine is busy chomping on that instead. Today, it takes about 15 years and several billion dollars to find a new drug. Every day that you don’t have good treatment, that’s real people, patients, lives and health in the balance.

Q How does Atomwise go about searching for the right drugs?