Stop believing in AI hype
How Inductive Bio gets higher quality molecules and better odds in the clinic
Life Sciences Today This Week
My guest this week was Josh Haimson, co-founder and CEO of Inductive Bio.
Josh built a career in AI for drug discovery and biopharma research
He started at MIT: machine learning for surgical intervention predictions using medical records
At Flat Iron Health: he built AI/ML teams for oncology data analysis across hundreds of millions of medical records
After the Roche/Genentech acquisition: he ran the AI group inside the Roche drug discovery organization.
Left Roche to start Inductive after identifying ADMET optimization opportunities
I asked Josh, “So what is ADMET exactly”?
Josh, “ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, Toxicity) is everything a drug needs to do in the body besides cure the disease”.
It’s one of the biggest bottlenecks in pharma — a grueling 4-5 year process of making thousands of molecules, one iteration at a time.
Inductive Bio built virtual chemistry labs where AI scientists explore millions of hypotheses overnight. The result? That 4-5 year timeline collapses to 1-2 years, with higher quality molecules and better odds in the clinic.
Their secret weapon: a pre-competitive data consortium where pharma companies pool ADMET data — not out of altruism, but because it’s the smartest business decision they can make.
The Industry anti-pattern
But here’s Josh’s warning to the industry: stop believing too much in the AI hype. Biology is still deeply incomplete. No AI spits out a perfect molecule. The real wins come from tight feedback loops, good data, and radical honesty about what we don’t yet know.
Listen to the show here
Visit Inductive Bio here
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