Orchestrating Scientists, Data, and AI to Discover New Drugs

Scotch McClure had a bold plan for Maxwell Biosciences to map and mine the roughly 3 percent of peptides circulating in human plasma. The company has harnessed AI to move from a massive and messy universe of human peptides to a small-molecule candidate that could offer a potential alternative to antibiotics, antifungals, and some antivirals. McClure, CEO of Maxwell, sat down with Nagaraja Srivatsan to discuss why he thinks AI is becoming the central engine that makes modern drug development not just faster but possible at all, how he sees AI as essential to filtering out the noise in vast datasets, and why organizations will need to surrender more of the scientific process to AI while constraining it with a clear vision and guardrails.