Will computers ever discover drugs from scratch?
With enough understanding and computing power, it should be possible, but will it happen?
I started working in drug discovery exactly 30 years ago, and one of the newest additions to the hallway where I worked was a room marked CADD: Computer-Assisted Drug Discovery. This was stocked with things like Evans and Sutherland work stations, which now look as if they should have a museum guide next to them explaining what they might have once been used for, but at the time I was impressed. The older generation of medicinal chemists across the hall was less so: they had put a sign up over their own door reading BADD, for Brain-Assisted Drug Discovery, and there matters stood.