Biotech key to Russia’s industrial sovereignty – Putin

AI is playing a vital role in the rapid development of the sector, the Russian president said at the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow

Biotechnology research underpinned by Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities is “strategically important” for ensuring Russia’s industrial sovereignty, President Vladimir Putin has said at the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow. Senior researchers attending the annual discussion event said that the country’s scientists are leading the pack globally with respect to AI.

Speaking at the forum on Wednesday, Putin stressed the importance of AI in bolstering biotechnological research that “helps us address key modern challenges.” The Russian president also advocated “equitable access to technologies of the future,” which should not become a “privilege for the ‘chosen’ ones.”

Another speaker at the event, Sergey Zhdanov, Director of the Sberbank Health Industry Center, recounted how the use of AI expedited the development of a drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Read more

“The target was identified by AI, the molecule was generated by AI, and it took two and a half years and cost $2.6 million” to reach phase two of clinical trials, he said.

According to Zhdanov, the standard timeframe for a scientific endeavor of this magnitude is three to five years and they often cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“This does not mean… that AI replaces scientists, but it means that we can move on to a whole new rate of implementation,” he concluded.

Artur Kadurin, Director of the AI-assisted Drug Development Center at the AIRI Artificial Intelligence Institute, concurred that the AI-driven approach significantly speeds up the process of trial and error inherent in the search for new drugs. However, at present, there is no single AI model specifically honed to meet the needs of biotechnological research, he noted.

According to Kadurin, Russia has “one of the strongest AI schools globally,” as evidenced by the large number of Russian scientists advancing the sector both at home and abroad.