37,000 AI agents in a 'virtual biotech' discover promising lung-cancer drug
burny_tech · x · 2026-11-10
Nature reports that researchers built a 'virtual biotech' of up to 37,000 AI scientist agents, overseen by a 'chief scientist', that autonomously ran drug discovery around the clock. The system identified a promising lung-cancer drug candidate, with results published in Science (Zhang et al., Zou lab). The case is a landmark demonstration of large-scale multi-agent collaboration automating scientific research, potentially replacing parts of the traditional pharma R&D pipeline.
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