According to the online journal Pharmaceutical Technology, machine learning engineers are in high demand from pharmaceutical companies. The highest number of job openings is in North America, but it is also becoming popular in some countries in Europe and Asia. For example, France experienced the highest growth in job openings from early March to May 2022, with job openings increasing by 2% year-on-year, reaching 4.2% of global job openings.
AI is increasingly being used in the pharmaceutical field, especially to improve computer-aided drug design, given its potential to rapidly incorporate megadata from biomedical databases. According to data analytics firm GlobalData, which published this report on ML job opportunities by Pharmaceutical Technology, it can significantly reduce the time and cost of bringing drugs to market, especially in areas of unmet need such as rare diseases.
GlobalData’s latest report, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Drug Discovery – Thematic Research, reveals that total spending on AI in the pharmaceutical industry is expected to reach more than $3 billion by 2025.
Kitty Whitney, Senior Director of Thematic Analysis at GlobalData, said:
“Drug discovery and development is an incredibly expensive and time-consuming process. It takes 12 to 18 years for a drug to reach the market, and the average cost is approximately $2.6 billion. The drug discovery process includes target identification and validation, assay development and screening, result identification, lead optimization, and candidate selection for further clinical development. The entire process takes months and often results in low success rates and poor quality results.”
Over the past few decades, advances in computer technology have led to the discovery of new drugs, but only 10% of candidates are eligible to participate in clinical trials, but AI has changed that.
Kitty Whitney commented:
“AI shows great potential to further improve these techniques by rapidly capturing and exploring the expanding chemical space driven by the ever-increasing amount of biomedical big data, such as genomics, for which some traditional approaches are unsuitable. Machine learning algorithms have been successfully used for drug target identification, virtual compound screening, novel drug design, drug repurposing, and identifying biomarkers of therapeutic response.”
In recent years, the use of AI has led to the emergence of startups, drug discovery partnerships, and record investments in the pharmaceutical sector. This marks the first AI-developed drug to enter clinical trials and the repurposing of a previously marketed drug to treat COVID-19.
Analysis of GlobalData’s Deals database shows that the number of AI-based strategic drug discovery alliances has increased significantly from just 10 in 2015 to 105 in 2021, including nearly 70 with pharmaceutical companies. GlobalData names BenevolentAI, Exscientia, Insilico Medicine, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and Atomwise as top AI providers, and Janssen, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK, Sanofi, and Takeda as top AI users.
But Kitty Whitney warns:
“Although AI has shown the potential to profoundly change the drug discovery process, its use is still in its infancy. Most new drugs developed using AI are in the preclinical or discovery stages, and it may take many years before an AI-based therapy is approved.A Despite its promise in drug discovery, it still faces several challenges. These challenges include data quality and relevance, educating the scientific community to increase buy-in, controlling the hype and dominant discourse around AI, and skills shortages.
Report on ML jobs in Pharmaceutical Technology
Pharmaceutical Technology analyzed data from GlobalData, which tracks the number of new job openings for major companies across various industries, in this case from the beginning of March to the end of May 2021, using machine learning to compare it to the same period this year.
North America continues to be the largest employment region, currently accounting for 63.9% of machine learning jobs, up from 62.6% a year ago. Europe saw an increase of 0.6% over the same period, while Asia-Pacific decreased by 1.9 percentage points over the same period, although some countries saw increases, with China’s share falling from 5% to 2%, while India’s share increased from 5% to 6%.
Which countries are seeing the highest growth in pharmaceutical industry job ads in ML?
61% of job openings are in North America, but the fastest growing country is France. It rose from 2.2% of all ML job openings in 2021 to 4.2% in 2022. This was followed by Canada (up 1.8 percentage points), India (1 case) and Belgium (0.8 cases).
Which cities have the most jobs?
Approximately 6.6% of all machine learning jobs in the pharmaceutical industry were posted in Cambridge, USA, 5.7% in Boston, 3.2% in San Francisco, and 2.5% in Bengaluru, India.
Translation from Industrie pharmaceutique: La France est le pays qui connait la plus forte croissance des offres d’emploi en ML
