This AI-designed drug for IBD was just given to human subjects for the first time

"We're excited to become a clinical-stage biotech company; it's exciting from an AI drug discovery standpoint," says Absci founder and CEO Sean McClain.

Artificial intelligence has been working its way into the drug development process for years now, but with little to show so far in revamping the notoriously burdensome process. While drugs are being developed using AI in a variety of ways, no drugs developed completely by AI, from start to finish, have so far made it over the finish line of regulatory approval. 

For that reason, every attempt by an AI drug to get approval is a landmark of sorts. Tuesday, drug development startup Absci, based in Vancouver, Washington, announced such a landmark, the beginning of a Phase I clinical ...