A team of Michigan State University researchers has received a $1.7 million federal grant to speed up the search for new drugs in the fight against a range of diseases by using artificial intelligence.

The project, funded by the National Institutes of Health over four years, calls on the expertise of a multi-disciplinary team of scientists – including computational biologists, computer scientists, medicinal chemists, and pharmacology scientists – in different departments at MSU.

The multi-disciplinary approach is “super important,” said Bin Chen, an associate professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Human Development, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Computer Science and Engineering. “Computer scientists play critical roles here,” he said, as do the other disciplines. “Their involvement is essential,” he said.

Chen is a lead principal investigator for the project. The other principal investigator is Jiayu Zhou, PhD, an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering and an authority on machine learning, data mining, and biomedical informatics. The team also includes Richard Neubig, MD, PhD, and Edmund Ellsworth, PhD, professors of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

A team led by Chen already has been using artificial intelligence to screen and repurpose existing drugs for diseases other than those for which they originally were intended. The new project expands on that by using artificial intelligence and machine learning – a subcategory of artificial intelligence that allows computers to recognize patterns and adjust without being reprogrammed – to predict how novel compounds, including many that do not yet exist, would act on gene expression in humans to combat disease.

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