AI's Next Pharma Challenge: Tackling Costly And Risky Clinical Trials

2026-05-29 04:08:57

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) AI has transformed the search for new medicines. Now drug companies are betting it can fix the slow, expensive process of testing them in humans. Select your language

Generated with artificial intelligence. Listening: AI's next pharma challenge: tackling costly and risky clinical trials This content was published on May 29, 2026 - 09:00 10 minutes Jessica Davis Plüss (text) Kai Reusser (visuals)

Ask a pharmaceutical company about the current approach to clinical trials and you're likely to hear a chorus of complaints about a broken and dysfunctional system. It takes on average at least a decade and roughlyExternal link $1-2 billion (CHF790 million-1.6 billion) to develop a new drug. Around 60-70% of that time is spent in the three phases of human testing. The longer a clinical trial takes, the longer it takes for that medicine to reach patients.

To make matters worse, companies often waste time and money on trials for drugs that aren't ultimately approved by regulators. For every 100 drugs that begin human trials, about 90 aren't given the green light because the tests fail to prove the medicines are safe or effective.

“The industry has just accepted that risk and failure are a part of drug development because there has been no other option,” said Kevin Buyens, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at AI biotech TwinEdge Bioscience in western Switzerland.“But this is changing. Digital technologies can help fill the gap.”

Artificial intelligence, especially machine-learning systems, have already helped scientists identify promising drug candidates by sifting through huge volumes of chemical and biological data far faster than humans.

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