Continued from front page

Pharmaceutical leaders emphasise that speeding up initial molecule discovery does not bypass clinical trials, regulatory reviews, or biological testing in animal and human models-a phase that makes up the vast majority of the 10-to-12-year drug development pipeline.

Finding a molecule that looks promising on a computer screen is only the beginning. It still has to be tested in laboratories, animal models and eventually human clinical trials to establish whether it is safe and actually works. AI may speed up the search for potential treatments, but it cannot simply make these steps disappear.

Critics such as cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, and cardiologist and digital medicine expert Eric Topol point out that current AI models lack the deep causal and biological understanding required to reliably yield breakthrough cures, and as of 2026, no AI-designed drug has achieved full clinical adoption.