In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at using AI to find new drugs, quantum biotechnology, the ROI of generative AI and more. To get The Prototype in your inbox, sign up here.

At Davos this week, all eyes were on President Trump’s remarks before the session and his designs on Greenland. But that was far from the only conversation happening at the World Economic Forum. Elsewhere at the event, scientists spoke about the urgent need for governments to address the problem of the growing resistance of microbes to antibiotics and other treatments, warning that deaths from these “superbugs” could cause more deaths than cancer by the middle of the century.

Glen Gowers, cofounder of AI biotech Basecamp Research, thinks his company could help address this urgent problem. Earlier this month, it released new AI models it says can accelerate drug design. Working with hardware giant NVIDIA, these systems were trained on data from a large variety of genetic data from species around the world, creating a very robust and accurate way to model complex biological molecules.

One application of this system is enabling development of better design methods of gene therapies for complex diseases. But another is finding new drugs against resistant microbes. In an accompanying paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the company used its AI........

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