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webmaven02/20/20252 repliesview on HN

But doesn't that mean that ranking the ideas to find the ones most worth testing is a useful problem to solve?


Replies

dekhn02/20/2025

The one model that would actually make a huge difference in pharma velocity is one that takes a target (protein that causes disease or whatever), a drug molecule (the putative treatment for the disease), and outputs the probability the drug will be approved by the FDA, how much it will cost to get approved, and the revenue for the next ten years.

If you could run that on a few thousand targets and a few million molecules in a month, you'd be able to make a compelling argument to the committee that approves molecules to go into development (probability of approval * revenue >> cost of approval)

colingauvin02/20/2025

If you had a crystal ball that could predict the properties of the molecule, perhaps.