The actual number of theoretical drug possibilities is in the trillions.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
Judge against scientific estimates of the size of the space of possible drug-like molecules (chemical space) as of 2020. True: credible estimates place the number of theoretical drug candidates at trillions or more (e.g., 10^12 or above, including estimates such as 10^60), so 'in the trillions' is a fair or conservative description. Mostly true: estimates put it at an order of magnitude that the word 'trillions' roughly captures. Mixed: estimates are contested. Mostly false: the figure misapplies a chemical-space estimate to a disease-specific context in a misleading way. False: credible estimates show the number is far smaller than trillions.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Exploring Novel Biologically-Relevant Chemical Space Through Artificial Intelligence: The NCATS ASPIRE Program PMC (NCATS ASPIRE authors) · 10 January 2020
“Chemical space is incredibly vast; estimates place the number of potential “drug-like” organic molecules between 1023 and 1060 (Polishchuk et al., 2013).”
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E2 Mapping biologically active chemical space to accelerate drug discovery PMC (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery authors, NIH workshop) · 1 January 2017
“the vast number of chemical structures in drug-like chemical space (~1060), and the smaller but still substantial number of biological targets in human and pathogen biological space (~106)”
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E3 Staying Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - LifeSciVC LifeSciVC · 9 March 2022
“Rough estimates indicate that 1060 drug-like molecules are theoretically possible, which is comparable to estimates of the number of atoms in the universe.”
Reasoning
E1 (2020) reports estimates of 10^23 to 10^60 potential drug-like organic molecules, and E2 (2017) gives roughly 10^60 structures in drug-like chemical space. These figures are at or far above the trillions (10^12), which the criteria treat as making 'in the trillions' a fair or conservative description. E3 (2022) repeats the 10^60 estimate, consistent with the earlier sources.
Cite this claim
Ray Kurzweil, “The actual number of theoretical drug possibilities is in the trillions.” (said May 2020). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_fcf316593be7, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_fcf316593be7
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Ray Kurzweil
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Mostly false
“Right now, you’re getting back about four months a year.”
Currently scientific progress gives back about four months of life expectancy per year.
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Mostly false
“And then AlphaFold 2 in 2022 went through 200 million proteins and got the shape exactly correct, and that’s going to help come up with new medications.”
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Resolved true
“As of two or three years ago, we had gone through 170,000 proteins.”
As of two or three years ago, 170,000 proteins had been worked through by people.
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Mixed
“The current method for testing these few treatments is to organize a few hundred human subjects and then test them over about a year and a half, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.”
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Mostly true
“Very often, the first several solutions tested on humans are not ideal and lead to other solutions that also take a few years to develop and test.”
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