Fujitsu and RIKEN Develop AI Technology for Predicting Protein Structural Changes
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Fujitsu and RIKEN have jointly unveiled an AI-driven drug discovery technology capable of predicting structural changes in proteins using generative AI technology, which converts electron microscope images into 3D density maps.
Fujitsu and RIKEN will integrate their newly developed generative AI technology as a core component of the next-generation IT-based drug discovery system. This system aims to unravel the intricate connections between target proteins and antibodies, offering a high-speed and highly accurate prediction of wide-ranging structural changes in molecules.
This technology enables the precise determination of protein conformations and changes, using experimental data in a fraction of the time typically required by conventional methods. This breakthrough promises to revolutionise the drug design process, particularly for creating drugs that target proteins associated with bacteria and viruses.
The generative AI technology, developed by Fujitsu and RIKEN, accurately estimates the various conformations of a target protein and their potential proportions from a multitude of electron microscopy projection images. Additionally, it predicts changes in the target protein's conformation based on these estimated proportions.
Together, these two technologies form an AI-driven drug discovery system that can forecast structural protein alterations on a broad scale, with the overarching goal of significantly reducing the time and cost involved in drug discovery processes.
