True God of Medicine: The Inventor of Viagra Announces His Involvement in Artificial Intelligence

By Super Neuro

You may not have heard of Viagra, but you must have heard of "Viagra", and you must have seen the "Wan Ai Ke" posters at the door of the pharmacy. Viagra and Wan Ai Ke are the common Chinese translations of Viagra.

The main ingredient is sildenafil, a magical drug for treating male dysfunction. Most of the aphrodisiacs and male health products on the market secretly add sildenafil. Recently, Viagra's chief pharmaceutical engineer, the protagonist of today's article, David Brown, challenged rare diseases, and his weapon was artificial intelligence technology.

A slip of the hand while trying to cure heart disease led to the birth of Viagra

In 1998, American scientist Murad won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that nitric oxide can promote cardiovascular dilation. 30 years ago, he discovered that nitroglycerin has a significant therapeutic effect on patients with angina pectoris.

David Brown, a pharmaceutical engineer at Pfizer, invented a new heart disease drug based on this theory, hoping it could treat angina pectoris. Unfortunately, for the trial patients suffering from angina pectoris, this new drug had no obvious effect.

However, what puzzled David Brown was thatAlthough the drug had little effect on treating heart disease, the male patients participating in the clinical trial refused to return the drug and even asked the doctor for more pills.

It turns out that the male patients discovered that this little blue pill has a strange "side effect": it can quickly get them into the mood during sex.

The little blue pill that's all the rage (does it look familiar?)

David Brown named this new heart disease drug, which accidentally became an "aphrodisiac", "Viagra" and officially launched it into the global market in the late 1990s. This move also brought huge profits to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

Abandon Viagra and invest in AI

We are a serious media. If you are more interested in Viagra than scientific pharmaceutical stories, please scroll to the end of the article and click "like" and you don't need to read the rest.

In 2014, David Brown, who had left Pfizer, co-founded Healx with two doctors of medicine from Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. Through machine learning and modern computer biology, they identify diseases and predict drug responses, and redesign drugs to treat rare diseases.

Healx has developed a platform called HealNet, which contains more than 1 billion pieces of medical data, including medical literature, patents, cases, clinical trials and other data. It is known as one of the most comprehensive disease knowledge bases in the world today.

HealNet uses machine learning methods to design drug models, effectively improve the efficiency of drug-disease matching, and develop more targeted new drugs more efficiently.

From treating sexual dysfunction to treating rare diseases

HealNet is conducting the most important drug research and development, no longer focusing on the greater harmony of life, but on the treatment of rare diseases.

For example, FXS stands for Fragile X Chromosome Syndrome, which is caused by a mutation in the human X chromosome and is prone to cause autism and intellectual disability.

It is conservatively estimated that there are at least 200,000 to 300,000 FXS patients with intellectual disability in my country. The Peking University Genetics Center found in a survey that the incidence of the disease in patients with intellectual disability is about 2.8%, and there is currently no drug that can completely cure FXS.

HealNet has screened out 8 new and effective drugs from millions of drugs worldwide according to priority. Animal experiments have been completed and clinical verification is expected later this year. In the next few years, there will be a chance for all families to get rid of the haze of FXS.

Pharmaceutical company: I am indeed not the god of medicine

In the movie "Dying to Survive" which was a big hit in China some time ago, the image of pharmaceutical companies and hospital doctors plummeted, and even pharmaceutical companies became synonymous with "black-hearted pharmaceutical companies that do not help patients in need."

But in reality, the profits of global pharmaceutical companies are not as high as exaggerated in the movies, and most pharmaceutical companies even face the risk of bankruptcy.

In fact, over the past three decades, the return on investment of pharmaceutical companies has continued to decline, and has even fallen below the average loan interest rate. In other words, it is still possible to invest in traditional pharmaceutical companies, which is a money-losing business.

According to data from Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group, by 2020, the return on pharmaceutical companies will be close to 0 yuan. If this happens in China, it will not even be able to keep up with inflation.

This results in:

In the future, no financial institution will be willing to invest in pharmaceutical companies.Pharmaceutical companies’ research and development of new drugs has come to a standstill, and we may face a situation where there are no drugs available.

By then, Indian manufacturers selling pirated drugs won’t even have anything to copy.

Therefore, HealNet, founded by David Brown, is extremely important.

According to his introduction to the media, once HealNet's platform technology is further improved, it will only take about 18 months from the beginning to clinical trials, while ordinary pharmaceutical companies used to need 5 to 7 years.

It is also estimated that the cost of Healx is about US$200,000, while ordinary pharmaceutical companies would need to spend tens of millions of dollars to complete this research and development.

Whoever makes medicine quickly and cheaply is the God of Medicine

In the future, Healx will focus mainly on rare cancers and neurological diseases, especially epilepsy, intellectual disability, etc., which are also the areas where Healx is currently best at.

David Brown is not only the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Healx, but also a PhD in biophysical neuroscience from Cambridge University with over 40 years of experience in medical research. He is also the chairman of the board of directors of the UK charity FMVSO and a member of the board of directors of several companies and charities.

David Brown, nearly 70 years old

David Brown is nearly 70 years old, an age that people around the world should be able to enjoy their retirement, but he is still working on the front line, using his 40 years of professional experience in the pharmaceutical industry to help pharmaceuticals enter the next era.

Considering the contribution of Viagra and the future achievements of Healx, he may be the real God of Medicine.