Imagine you want to build the Golden Gate Bridge with LEGO bricks. You could use what you have on hand—generic bricks and bricks from other LEGO sets. No matter how well you fit the pieces together, your final product will never be exactly what you envisioned. But what if LEGO designed a special LEGO set of the Golden Gate Bridge?* You could be sure that the finished product would look exactly as you pictured it.

What if the same concept could be applied to drug discovery? What if therapeutic molecules could be designed from scratch to perfectly match their target? Enter generative biology, which aims to do just that.

This Insight delves into how generative biology relates to AI drug discovery, discussing the factors driving and challenging its adoption, and identifying the companies in the space.

Completing a set gives LEGO builders a sense of pride and satisfaction. How infinitely more gratifying it would be to “build” a protein with the desired structures and properties that allow it to meet a specific therapeutic need and bring relief to more patients—even those with the rarest diseases—more quickly.