{"id":105094,"date":"2026-07-14T09:02:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/105094\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T09:02:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:02:21","slug":"drug-metabolism-ai-competition-results-show-that-bigger-may-not-always-be-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/105094\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug metabolism AI competition results show that bigger may not always be better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brittany Trang, Ph.D., covers AI in health and medicine: Does it actually work? Who benefits, or might be harmed? She writes the weekly AI Prognosis newsletter<\/a>. Follow her on Threads<\/a>, Mastodon<\/a>, and Bluesky<\/a>. You can reach Brittany on Signal at btrang.01.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the CASP competition<\/a> vaulted AlphaFold<\/a> to prominence and a Nobel Prize<\/a>. But the era of people being impressed by an artificial intelligence model correctly predicting the structure of a protein \u2014 once a challenge many experts didn\u2019t think would be solved in their lifetime \u2014 is over. Now drug developers want AI that can solve their big problems<\/a>, like discerning whether the body is going to attack a drug candidate and render it useless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One such example is the pregnane X receptor, or PXR. When activated, PXR increases the production of an enzyme that specifically breaks down foreign organic molecules \u2014 such as drug molecules \u2014 so the body can dispose of them. The specific enzyme that PXR regulates can metabolize approximately 50% of all marketed drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most drug development campaigns only discover whether candidates trip this sensor late in the game, forcing drug developers to go back to the drawing board. But if an AI model could reliably predict whether a given drug candidate will activate the PXR receptor, it could fix a lot of problems that present hurdles for new potential drugs, including the drug exiting the body too fast or creating drug\u2013drug interactions.<\/p>\n

STAT+ Exclusive Story<\/p>\n

Already have an account? Log in<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"STAT+\"\/<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"STAT+\"\/
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tThis article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers
\n\t\t\t\tUnlock this article \u2014 plus daily coverage and analysis of the biotech sector \u2014 by subscribing to STAT+.<\/p>\n

Already have an account? Log in<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tIndividual plans<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tGroup plans<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tView All Plans<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brittany Trang, Ph.D., covers AI in health and medicine: Does it actually work? Who benefits, or might be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,1719,1720,460],"class_list":["post-105094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-biotechnology","tag-drug-development","tag-stat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}