The role of artificial intelligence in the development of drugs for the treatment of oncological diseases

Abstract

Humanity has always sought ways to obtain medicines, and these efforts continue to this day. Especially labor-intensive and resource-intensive research involves the discovery of effective agents for oncological diseases. Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. For example, in 2020 alone, nearly 10 million deaths were registered, along with an even greater number of cases of the disease, although many patients achieve remission through treatment. Despite decades of research and billions of dollars in investment, bringing a single effective drug to market remains challenging. Traditional drug development often involves a high attrition rate of candidates, which is especially noticeable in oncology, where tumor heterogeneity, the emergence of resistance, and the complex conditions of the tumor microenvironment significantly complicate the translation of activity from in vitro (in a test tube) to in vivo (in the human body). In recent years, computational technologies have been introduced into the field of new drug development to accelerate research time and minimize costs; this is precisely the main reason for implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in new drug development processes