Isomorphic Labs is nearing human clinical trials for drugs developed using AI.
Isomorphic helps pharma partners with their drug development programs while also working on its own internal drug candidates.
Drug development today is often slow and costly, with a high risk of failure. AI could significantly improve those odds.
Alphabet’s drug discovery arm, Isomorphic Labs, is getting ready to begin human testing of drugs developed using artificial intelligence. The move could mark a turning point in how new medicines are created, making the process faster, more accurate and far less expensive than traditional methods. Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind’s chief business officer, shared the update with Fortune.
SurveyAfter years of development, Murdoch says human clinical trials for Isomorphic’s AI-designed drugs are finally within reach. “The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings,” he was quoted as saying in the report. “We’re staffing up now. We’re getting very close.”
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Isomorphic Labs was launched in 2021, growing out of DeepMind’s AI system AlphaFold. Originally designed to predict the shapes of proteins, AlphaFold has advanced to model how proteins interact with other molecules, including DNA and drugs. These improvements made the system far more useful for drug discovery.
“This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Labs,” Murdoch said. “It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery.”
The company brings together AI experts and experienced pharmaceutical scientists to build what Murdoch calls a “world-class drug design engine.” In 2024, Isomorphic signed major research deals with pharma companies Novartis and Eli Lilly. In April 2025, it raised $600 million in its first round of external funding, led by Thrive Capital.
Isomorphic helps pharma partners with their drug development programs while also working on its own internal drug candidates. These are intended to go through early testing and be licensed out later.
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“We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs. We develop those, put them into human clinical trials… we haven’t got that yet, but we’re making good progress,” Murdoch said.
Drug development today is often slow and costly, with a high risk of failure. Murdoch believes AI could significantly improve those odds. “We’re trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful,” he said.
“One day we hope to be able to say — well, here’s a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease,” he added. “All powered by these amazing AI tools.”
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Ayushi Jain
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