AI accelerates hunt for brain condition treatments
Algorithms will help identify drugs that could address the neurological disease and suggest them for clinical trials on humans.
Researchers at the UK Dementia Research Institute are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to speed up the search for treatments to neurological conditions.
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Scientists hope that using algorithms to detect patterns of disease will reduce time usually spent analysing patient data such as voice recordings, eye scans and lab-grown brain cells to work out if existing drugs could be repurposed.
The technology would also be used to predict suitable medicines to treat conditions such as motor neurone disease (MND), with hopes that effective treatments could be found in "years rather than decades".
Trial participant Steven Barrett, who was diagnosed with MND 10 years ago, said the trials were a "bright light" for individuals like him who suffered from neurological conditions.
"MND is a horrible disease, it strips you of who you are," he said.
"It rips any sense of future that you may feel that you had planned for yourself - all that goes."
The Institute, based in Edinburgh, is also building a database of people with conditions including Parkinson's, Dementia and MND.
Clinicians gather iris scans and voice recordings and use the AI to wade through masses of data to spot signs of change that could be early warning signs.
Blood samples are also collected from volunteer patients to cultivate stem cells, which existing drugs are then tested on using both robots, traditional lab equipment and computer algorithms.
Algorithms will work to identify drugs that could convert the neurological disease signature into a healthy one, and suggest them for clinical trials on humans.
So far, around 1,500 drugs have been developed and approved to treat other conditions, but there are hopes that there may already be existing drugs that could be found to be effective on the brain.
Institute chief executive Prof Siddarthan Chandran said that dealing with the brain - "the most complicated organ in the body" - was particularly challenging, and had high hopes for the new tech.
"A combination of AI and new technologies mean we can now do things which would have been unbelievable when I was at medical school."