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Isomorphic Labs, the AI-powered drug company spun out of Googles DeepMind, just announced that its getting ready to begin human clinical trials of drugs designed by AI. In an interview with Fortune on July 6, Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMinds chief business officer, shared that the company is currently gearing up to start human trials. This milestone will mark the first time that Google DeepMinds breakthrough AI drug discovery system, AlphaFold3, will be put into practice on actual patients. The news comes as tech companies and research institutions are rolling out new applications for AI in medicine at a frantic pace. Early this month, Microsoft released a report claiming that its new AI Diagnostic Orchestrator is around four times more accurate than a human physician when it comes to diagnosing complex issues. On the same day, researchers at Northwestern Medicine published a study on a new AI-powered device that may revolutionize cancer screening. Now, heres what to know about Isomorphic Labs’ next major step in AI-powered drug development: What is Isomorphic Labs? Isomorphic Labs is a London-based drug developer thats owned and operated by Alphabet Inc. The company was founded in 2021 as an offshoot from DeepMind, Googles multidisciplinary AI research arm. In multiple interviews, Isomorphic Labs executives have explained the companys intimidating goal: to eventually solve all diseases using AI. This isnt about developing therapeutics for a particular indication or a particular target, Max Jaderberg, chief AI officer at Isomorphic Labs, explained in an interview this April. Its really thinking about, how do we create a really general drug design engine with AIsomething that we can apply to not just a single target, or even a single modality, but we can apply this again and again across any different disease area? What is AlphaFold AI? The key unlock driving Isomorphic Labs expansive goal is its trailblazing AlphaFold AI system, a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry last October. The most recent iteration of the technology, AlphaFold3, can predict proteins complex structures, as well as modeling how certain proteins might interact with other molecules, like DNA and drugs. These insights can essentially give researchers a supercharged headstart on drug development. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained the tech in a conference call last May: You imagine that AlphaFold gives you the structure of a protein youre interested in, in a particular disease, let’s say, and with these new capabilities we can now design a compound or ligand (a ‘chemical messenger‘) that will bind to a specific place . . . on the surface of the protein, once you understand the structure of it, and we can predict how strong the binding affinity will be, Hassabis said. Its a critical step if you want to design drugs. Currently, AlphaFold serves as an AI-powered first step in drug development. After the AlphaFold3 system models a potential interaction, researchers then need to use other AI models to predict factors like toxicity and interactions with other drugs. Then, to actually commercialize a new drug, it needs to be tested in wet lab experiments, followed by human clinical trials. Whats happening now? Now, that human clinical trial step is finally in sight. According to Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs team is currently collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer, and is already staffing up for its first human clinical trials. One day we hope to be able to saywell, heres a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease, all powered by these amazing AI tools, Murdoch told Fortune. Isomorphic Labs did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on what form of cancer its first trial drugs will be designed to target.
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Journey with me back to the good old days, if you will. There was a time that, when youd buy a gadget, itd come with a sometimes verbose but often helpful instruction manual. Not a quick start guide: an honest-to-goodness manual that you could pore through. Your patience and attention to detail would be rewarded, as youd learn tons of helpful tips and tricks that youd almost certainly never stumble upon on your own. Those days are gone. Im not entirely sure when this became a thing but I do recall opening an Apple gadget many years ago and wondering if theyd forgotten to include the manual. Anyway. The point is that Ive had my Pixel 9 for months and months, and I finally got around to digging into its many features and functionality. And, indeed, I found some stuff that was unexpected, and pretty great. Quick Tap Shortcuts Well start with my favorite. Dive into Settings > System > Gestures > Quick tap to start actions and prepare to be mildly surprised. You can set it to take a screenshot, summon the Google Assistant, pause or resume media, or even open a specific app. Once youve made your choice, thwap-thwap the back of your phone with your index finger while youre holding it and see what happens. I know, right?! Notification History Ever dismiss a notification in a fit of overwhelmed rage and then realize it was actually important? Your Pixel has a built-in safety net. The “Notification History” feature keeps a log of all your recent notifications, even the ones you swiped away in a moment of haste. To find it, go to Settings > Notifications > Notification History and make sure it’s turned on. You’ll never miss a crucial alert again. Hold For Me OK, this one isn’t entirely unknown, but if you havent experienced its glorious potential, youre missing out. If youre on a call and you find yourself trapped in the endless purgatory of hold music, keep an eye out for the “Hold for me” button. Tap it, and your Pixel will listen for a real human voice on the other end. When someone actually picks up, you’ll get a notification to jump back onto the call. It’s not foolproof, but when it works, it feels like a tiny miracle. Long Screenshots Taking a screenshot of a long web page or conversation used to be a multistep dance of multiple captures. But your Pixel has a hidden superpower: scrolling screenshots. Take a regular screenshot (power + volume down). Instead of just disappearing, a little “Capture more” buttonan icon with up and down arrowswill often appear at the bottom. Tap it, and you can drag the borders to capture the entire scrollable content. It’s great for saving entire articles or those lengthy text message threads where youre trying to win an argument with someone by using their past words against them. So much drama. Adaptive Vibration Tucked away in Settings > Sound & vibration > Adaptive vibration, you’ll find a feature that subtly adjusts your phone’s vibration intensity based on your surroundings. In a quiet room, your notifications might be softer. In a noisy environment or if your phones in your pocket, they’ll intelligently boost themselves so you don’t miss crucial calls or messages. It’s not a night-and-day difference, but it’s one of those subtle Pixel touches that makes living with the phone just a little bit nicer.
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After pouring brown, gritty liquid from a huge silver tank into a flute-like container known as a refractometer, South African beer brewing master Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela gives an expert nod of approval and passes it around to her students, who yell their observations with glee. When you are brewing you must constantly check your mixture, Nxusani-Mawela instructs them. We are looking for a balance between the sugar and the grains. The 41-year-old Nxusani-Mawela is an international beer judge and taster, and is believed to be the first Black woman in South Africa to own a craft brewery, a breakthrough in a world largely dominated by men and big corporations. Her desire is to open South Africa’s multibillion-dollar beer-brewing industry to more Black people and more women. At her microbrewery in Johannesburg, she’s teaching 13 young Black graduatesmost of them womenthe art of beer making. The science behind brewing The students at the Brewsters Academy have chemical engineering, biotechnology or analytical chemistry degrees and diplomas, but are eager to get themselves an extra qualification for a possible career in brewing. Wearing hairnets and armed with barley grains and water, the scientists spend the next six hours on the day’s lesson, learning how to malt, mill, mash, lauter, boil, ferment and filter to make the perfect pale ale. My favorite part is the mashing,” said Lerato Banda, a 30-year-old chemical engineering student at the University of South Africa who has dreams of owning her own beer or beverage line. She’s referring to the process of mixing crushed grains with hot water to release sugars, which will later ferment. “Its where the beer and everything starts. Nxusani-Mawela’s classes began in early June. Students will spend six months exploring beer varieties, both international and African, before another six months on work placement. Beer is for everyone Nxusani-Mawela’s Tolokazi brewery is in the Johannesburg suburb of Wynberg, wedged between the poor Black township of Alexandra on one side and the glitzy financial district of Sandtonknown as Africa’s richest square mileon the other. She hails from the rural town of Butterworth, some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away, and first came across the idea of a career in beer at a university open day in Johannesburg. She started brewing as an amateur in 2007. She has a microbiology degree and sees beer making as a good option for those with a science background. I sort of fell in love with the combination of the business side with the science, with the craftsmanship and the artistic element of brewing, she said. For the mother of two boys, beer brewing is also ripe for a shakeup. I wanted to make sure that being the first Black female to own a brewery in South Africa, that Im not the first and the last, she said. Brewsters Academy for me is about transforming the industry . . . What I want to see is that in five, 10 years from now that it should be a norm to have Black people in the industry, it should be a norm to have females in the industry.” South Africa’s beer industry supports more than 200,000 jobs and contributes $5.2 billion to South Africas gross domestic product, according to the most current Oxford Economics research in Beers Global Economic Footprint. While South Africa’s brewing sector remains male-dominated, like most places, efforts are underway to include more women. One young woman at the classes, 24-year-old Lehlohonolo Makhethe, noted women were historically responsible for brewing beer in some African cultures, and she sees learning the skill as reclaiming a traditional role. “How it got male dominated, I dont know, Makhethe said. Id rather say we are going back to our roots as women to doing what we started. With an African flavor While Nxusani-Mawela teaches all kinds of styles, she also is on a mission to keep alive traditional African beer for the next generation. Her Wild African Soul beer, a collaboration with craft beer company Soul Barrel Brewing, was the 2025 African Beer Cup champion. It’s a blend of African Umqombothi beera creamy brew incorporating maize and sorghum maltwith a fruity, fizzy Belgian Saison beer. Umqombothi is our African way, and everybody should know how to make it, but we dont, she said. I believe that the beer styles that we make need to reflect having an element of our past being brought into the future. She’s used all sorts of uniquely African flavors in her Tolokazi line, including the marula fruit and the rooibos bush that’s native to South Africa and better-known for being used in a popular caffeine-free tea. Who could have thought of rooibos beer? said Lethabo Seipei Kekae after trying the beer for the first time at a beer festival. Its so smooth. Even if you are not a beer drinker, you can drink it. Michelle Gumede, Associated Press
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