Machine Learning Methods In Drug Discovery: A Selective Review

Drug development represents the most challenging phase to pharmaceutical industry, as it is extremely expensive and time consumable. But, under increasing demand to produce safe and innovative drugs faster and at a lower cost, the focus has switched to enhance the lead identification and the lead optimization at the early discovery phase by incorporating insilico recent technologies. Among recent technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been introduced as a powerful solution to the adressed issues, and it results to speed up significantly the development process. Where, machine-learning played a key role in producing fresh drug candidates. In this work, we walk through the fundamentals of machine learning algorithms, review and discuss their application and current issues in drug development.