AI-Driven Innovation for Smarter and Safer Drug Development

The British Pharmacological Society and the British Toxicology Society are holding a one-day online meeting with the theme ‘AI-Driven Innovation for Smarter and Safer Drug Development’. The meeting will focus on the opportunities and challenges associated with the increasing use of artificial intelligence throughout the process of developing a new medicine, considering aspects of efficacy and safety.

The meeting will include presentations on the use of AI for:
1.   Drug discovery
2.   Drug development
3.   Clinical and regulatory assessment of drugs

The meeting will also include:
Oral communications
Prizes

Wednesday 14 January 2026

09:00 – 09:05	Welcome and Introduction
09:05 – 09:30	Introduction to artificial intelligence and machine learning in drug development	Dr Peter Cox, Ispomorphic Labs
Drug Discovery
09:30 – 09:55	Prediction of ligand-target interactions using AI/ML	Chalotte Deane, Oxford
09:55 – 10:20	AI and machine learning for drug discovery	Oliver Beguignon, Leiden
10:20 – 10:45	Questions and Panel Discussion
10:45 – 11:15	Refreshment Break
Drug Development
11:15 – 11:40	Use of UK Biobank for discovery of drug efficacy biomarkers	Patricia Munroe, Queen Mary
11:40 – 12:05	Computational modelling of drug toxicity risk	Speaker TBC
12:05 – 12:30	Questions and Panel Discussion
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch Break
13:30 – 13:45	Oral Communication 1
13:45 – 14:00	Oral Communication 2
14:00 – 14:15	Oral Communication 3
14:15 – 14:30	Oral Communication 4
14:30 – 15:00	Refreshment Break
Clinical & Regulatory
15:00 – 15:25	Ethical medical product development through computational medicine	Alejandro Frangi, Manchester
15:25 – 15:50	Enabling smarter drug development through clinical data interpretation by LLMs	Megan Houweling, Medstone Science
15:50 – 16:15	Questions and Panel Discussion
16:15 – 16:30	Closing Remarks and Prize Giving

Event Close

Professor Chalotte Deane MBE
Professor of Structural Bioinformatics, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford

Oliver Béquignon
Assistant Professor in AI & structure-based drug design, Leiden University

Professor Patricia B Munroe
Professor of Molecular Medicine, Centre Lead for Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine, Queen Mary University of London

Professor Alejandro Frangi
Bicentenary Turing Chair in Computational Medicine, UK CEiRSI Executive Director at The University of Manchester

Megan Houweling
Director of Science at Medstonce Science- SURUS consultancy

Additional speakers to be announced soon.