Will a drug designed with significant contribution from an AlphaFold-like system pass a Phase I trial by end of 2025?
40
Ṁ4959
2026
34%
chance

Definitions and Criteria [please read carefully]:

1. "AlphaFold-like system"

An AI system that uses deep learning to predict protein structures or design novel proteins with accuracy comparable to or exceeding AlphaFold 2. This includes AlphaProteo or similar tools from any company, not just DeepMind.

2. Significant Contribution:

The AI system must have played a crucial role in the drug's design, as evidenced by at least one of the following:

a) Explicit confirmation in a paper (whether peer-reviewed or published as a pre-print).

b) Official statement from the drug developer citing the AI system's importance.

c) Patent filing citing the AI tool as critical to the drug's development.

3. Passing Phase I Trials:

The drug must complete Phase I trials in humans with results indicating acceptable safety and tolerability, as reported by the drug developer or regulatory authority.

4. Commercial Potential:

The drug is likely to have significant commercial value if it's eventually approved by medical authorities. Significant commercial value is defined as at least $1 billion in projected lifetime revenue. This number would be estimated based off the company's own projections, or based off the lifetime revenue of previous generation drugs in the same category.

5. Eligible Jurisdictions:

Phase I trials must be conducted and completed in one or more of the following jurisdictions:

- United States or Canada

- Any EU Member, UK, Norway, Switzerland or Iceland

- Australia or New Zealand

- Japan

Other jurisdictions will only be accepted if there's widespread consensus among Western scientists of their Phase I trial being trustworthy.

6. Public Disclosure:

Information confirming all the above criteria must be publicly available through official sources (regulatory filings, company announcements, or scientific publications) by January 31, 2026.

Market Details:

- Betting closes: Dec 31, 2025

- Resolution date: Jan 31, 2026 (to account for 2025 data being published with a delay)

Resolution Criteria:

Yes: There is clear, publicly available evidence that a drug meeting ALL of the above criteria has passed Phase I trials, with the last day of the trial occurring no later than December 31, 2025.

No: No clear, publicly available evidence of any drug meeting ALL of the above criteria, or if no such drug has completed Phase I trials by December 31, 2025.

Question was inspired by this EY tweet:

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A vaccine against malaria is now in stage 2 clinical trials, targeting the protein Pfs48/45. AlphaFold 2 was involved in determining the structure of that protein (paper, DeepMind publicity blog).

I could not find a direct attribution chain linking the final vaccine to AlphaFold on a cursory search though.

bought Ṁ500 YES from 86% to 90%

ChatGPT says 3-5 years from protein design to the *start* of Phase 1 clinical trials.

@EliezerYudkowsky complete side question; what heuristics do you use to decide whether to rely on an answer from ChatGPT to this sort of question ?

AlphaFold 2 was released in 2020, so that timeline allows clinical trials by 2025.