How AI Will Transform Biopharma: The Sequence of Change Matters
By
Benjamine Liu
Summary
Ben Liu, CEO of Formation Bio, argues that AI will transform the pharmaceutical industry unevenly and sequentially. Some parts of drug discovery and development are becoming software-like—faster, cheaper, and iterative—while others remain constrained by the physical world, such as patient recruitment, dosing, and long clinical trial timelines. The article explores how the sequence in which these frontiers move determines where value concentrates and where it erodes in the biopharma landscape.
Source
bskyHow AI Will Transform Biopharma: The Sequence of Change Mattersa16z.newsKey quotes
· 4 pulledAI will transform pharma, but not evenly and not all at once.
Some parts of drug discovery and development are already software-like: faster, cheaper, iterative, driven by model improvements.
Others stay bound by the physical world, such as recruiting patients, dosing them, and waiting years for an endpoint to read out.
The sequence in which these frontiers move determines where value concentrates and where it erodes.
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