Pushing Tech Boundaries

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Technological advances are continuing to push boundaries for global industries. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one such advancement and is being increasingly employed in research and scientific work across multiple disciplines as a result of its ability to improve efficiencies.

A recent example of how AI is improving efficiency at the research stage has been demonstrated by co-scientist, Google’s new AI research tool, which solved a complex problem about superbugs—that had taken microbiologists a decade to work out—in a mere 48 hours (1). Google’s AI tool, built on Gemini 2.0, has been created to help scientists generate novel hypotheses and research proposals, which it does through a combination of specialized agents based on scientific methodology (2).

“The AI co-scientist represents a promising advance toward AI-assisted technologies for scientists to help accelerate discovery,” said Juraj Gottweis, Google Fellow, and Vivek Natarajan, Research Lead, in a blog post (3). “This project illustrates how collaborative and human-centered AI systems might be able to augment human ingenuity and accelerate scientific discovery.”

On the theme of collaboration, earlier this year, in January 2025, accelerated computing company, NVIDIA, announced new partnerships with IQVIA, Illumina, Mayo Clinic, and Arc Institute, to transform the healthcare and life sciences industry with AI (4). Using AI agents, NVIDIA’s partners are seeking to accelerate clinical trials, advance drug discovery, and support industry growth.

Looking a little further along the development lifecycle, towards the larger-scale commercial manufacturing end, the benefits of smarter technology and AI implementation are also being seen. However, as highlighted in this issue’s Focus piece, which can be found on pages 10–13, while technological advances are accelerating progress, there are still hurdles to overcome. “Plenty of challenges stand in the way, including cost of implementation, regulatory compliance, and more. We have heard from experts who anticipate that fully automated, ‘lights-out’ biomanufacturing facilities could become a reality within the next five to 10 years,” explains Anthony Christopher, commercial manager of bioprocessing at Kent Elastomer Products (5).

References

1. Gerken, T. AI Cracks Superbug Problem in Two Days that Took Scientists Years. BBC News, Feb. 20, 2025.
2. Haigney, S. Google Launches AI Co-Scientist System. PharmTech.com, Feb. 20, 2025.
3. Gottweis, J.; Natarajan, V. Accelerating Scientific Breakthroughs with AI Co-Scientist. Blog Post. Google Research. Research.google. Feb. 19, 2025.
4. NVIDIA. NVIDIA Partners with Industry Leaders to Advance Genomics, Drug Discovery, and Healthcare. Press Release, Jan. 13, 2024.
5. Mirasol, F. Accelerating Adoption of Smart Tools to Advance Manufacturing. Pharm. Tech. 2025 49 (2) 10–13.

About the author

Mike Hennessy Jr is President and CEO of MJH Life Sciences®

Article details

Pharmaceutical Technology®
Vol. 49, No. 2
March 2025
Page: 8

Citation

When referring to this article, please cite it as Hennessy, M. Pushing Tech Boundaries. Pharmaceutical Technology 2025 49 (2).