Last Week’s Breakthroughs in AI: June 11

2025-06-01

Last Week’s Breakthroughs in AI: June 11 AI just made drug discovery 1,000× faster – turning hours into seconds. Researchers at MIT and Recursion have unveiled a model called Boltz-2 that predicts how tightly a drug molecule binds to a protein, matching the accuracy of complex physics simulations while running over 1,000 times faster. What once took days of computation can now happen in minutes. In fact, Boltz-2 can screen vast libraries of molecules in the time it used to take to analyze just one, allowing scientists to spot promising drug candidates far earlier. Why does this matter? This breakthrough could dramatically cut the cost and time needed to discover new medicines. Drug R&D is famously slow and expensive – faster predictive models mean cheaper trials and quicker paths to cures. Notably, Boltz-2 will be released as fully open source, inviting researchers and startups everywhere to build on it. It’s a glimpse of how AI can transform not just software, but high-stakes industries like pharmaceuticals – accelerating innovation that directly benefits humanity. The question coming to my mind is… will this make drugs cheaper or only increase big pharma’s profits? Sources:

MIT CSAIL, “MIT releases breakthrough protein-binding affinity model, expanding role of AI in drug discovery.” (June 7, 2025)
Scarlett Evans, “MIT Unveils AI Breakthrough in Drug Discovery With New Model.” (AI Business, June 6, 2025)