How big pharma is using AI to untangle the language of DNA

CHATGPT and other large language models have seen a surge in popularity in recent months, transforming firms like OpenAI into multi-billion dollar businesses and amassing hundreds of millions of users worldwide, employing the tool to summarise reports, answer queries or write people’s homework.

- Simon Hunt

But in a small office block wedged in between St Pancras Station and Google’s giant new London headquarters, a team of researchers is exploring another purpose for large language models: to understand the language of DNA.

Their work in building up a picture of the structure of human DNA and how it influences medical outcomes, combined with a range of other AI-powered tools being built, is set to rapidly transform the world of pharma, including improved diagnoses, better treatment and faster drug development.

“AI and machine learning has been around for a long time but what’s really interesting now is this explosion of data in biology and medicine,” said Kim Branson, the global head of artificial intelligence at GSK who manages the team of about 50 at King’s Cross.

“We can take a tissue and see each individual cell and measure all these things in amazingly fine detail. You can take a sequence of DNA and figure out which gene to turn on or off to increase or decrease a mutation.