#202 Raphael Townshend: How AI and RNA Tech is Transforming Drug Discovery (Inside Atomic AI)

Raphael Townshend, founder and CEO of Atomic AI, leverages artificial intelligence to revolutionize drug discovery by targeting RNA structures. While traditional medicine focuses on proteins, RNA represents a vast, largely untapped target space, as 80% of the human genome is transcribed into RNA compared to only 2% into proteins. Atomic AI’s foundation model, ADAM1, predicts 3D RNA shapes, enabling rational drug design where small molecules are engineered to bind to specific structural pockets. By integrating proprietary high-throughput wet lab data with transformer-based AI architectures, the company overcomes the scarcity of public RNA structural data. This methodology shifts drug development from trial-and-error phenotypic screening to precise, structure-based targeting, offering potential breakthroughs for previously "undruggable" diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration through more potent, selective, and orally administered therapies.