Tasly and Huawei released a large model of digital intelligence materia medica

Reporter Yan Guowen and Cao Xueping report from Tianjin

(Yan Kaijing, Chairman of Tasly Pharmaceutical Group, made a keynote speech Organizer/Photo)

In 2024, "artificial intelligence+" will be written into the "Government Work Report" for the first time. Under the wave of artificial intelligence sweeping the world, what new development opportunities will the traditional Chinese medicine industry usher in?

A few days ago, at the 4th Conference on the International Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine held by Tianjin Tasly International Exchange Center, the digital intelligence materia medica model jointly built by Tasly and Huawei was officially released.

"The digital intelligence Materia Medica language model has 38 billion parameters, based on the pre-training of massive text data of traditional Chinese medicine, combined with the retrieval enhancement of the vector library, and the fine-tuning of multiple scenarios of traditional Chinese medicine research and development, which can better help researchers complete the mining and summary of theoretical evidence of traditional Chinese medicine." Yan Kaijing, executive deputy director of the National Key Laboratory of Modern Chinese Medicine Creation and chairman of Tasly Pharmaceutical Group, introduced.

Qiao Nan, General Manager of AI Scientific Computing and Chief Healthcare Scientist of HUAWEI CLOUD AI, said that AI is a very important tool to further liberate and develop enterprise productivity. The large model of digital intelligence materia medica covers the fields of question answering, generation, and intelligent computing. Natural product molecules are one of the largest treasures of traditional Chinese medicine, and many well-known drugs are extracted from natural products. Better drug discovery based on the huge treasure trove of natural products is an important way to realize the digital intelligence of traditional Chinese medicine.

Enter the era of digital intelligence

Digital intelligence Chinese medicine has evolved from traditional Chinese medicine and modern Chinese medicine.

According to the "Digital Intelligence of Chinese Medicine - Digital Intelligence Development of Modern Chinese Medicine White Paper", digital intelligence of Chinese medicine takes disruptive science and technology including artificial intelligence as a breakthrough, innovatively configures new production factors containing massive data of traditional Chinese medicine, combines new technical means such as cloud computing and large models, and leads modern Chinese medicine to achieve accurate medication, intelligent production, and digital intelligence of traditional Chinese medicine through the combination of traditional Chinese medicine products. A new level of efficacy precision (three essences), so as to create a new paradigm of digital intelligence Chinese medicine research and development.

"Under the leadership of the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, modern Chinese medicine has built a number of national standards, and has basically achieved interdisciplinary and multi-level knowledge integration in the cultivation of medicinal materials, preparation production, pharmacology and efficacy research and clinical application. However, due to the problems of large fluctuations in the quality of raw materials, complex material composition, insufficient understanding of toxic and side effects, and unclear mechanism of action, there are still some bottlenecks in the development of the modern Chinese medicine industry. Yan Kaijing said that compared with chemical drugs, traditional Chinese medicine lacks clinical evidence and scientific verification in line with the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine, which restricts clinical application and promotion to a certain extent. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology represented by big data and cloud computing, digital intelligence has become a new driving force for the development of the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

Yan Kaijing said that digital intelligence Chinese medicine is guided by the needs of patients, according to the clinical symptoms, signs and evolution of patients, under the guidance of traditional Chinese medicine theory, relying on the digital intelligence model tool of traditional Chinese medicine, and using data + mechanism (AI for Science) integration to break through the experience model of traditional Chinese medicine and realize the digital intelligence Chinese medicine design model with accurate benefits. Therefore, the digital intelligence of traditional Chinese medicine with "six modernizations and three essences" as the core connotation has become a clear direction for Tasly modern Chinese medicine to move towards the future.

In the process of the development of digital intelligence Chinese medicine, three key paths have been gradually formed: one is the path of deep analysis of drug and disease characteristics with multi-dimensional and multi-modal digital intelligence Chinese medicine research and development technology; the second is to use intelligent manufacturing technology to ensure the precise control, efficiency, green and sustainable development of traditional Chinese medicine product quality; The third is to use the wisdom of the brain of traditional Chinese medicine to efficiently empower the individualized and precise service of digital and intelligent traditional Chinese medicine.

Yan Kaijing introduced that at present, Tasly has continuously carried out innovative self-reinvention and continuous precipitation in the fields of traditional Chinese medicine R&D and manufacturing based on these three key paths, and has made every effort to build a digital intelligence platform with Xingdouyun traditional Chinese medicine characteristics, which has played an important role in the analysis of traditional Chinese medicine and disease mechanism and the guidance of the development of new varieties of traditional Chinese medicine. The "Intelligent Manufacturing Technology System of Traditional Chinese Medicine with Quality Digitalization as the Core" has been created, and the scientific and technological achievements have reached the international leading level after identification, and won the special prize of Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award in 2022.

Help "reasoning" and "finding medicine"

According to reports, at present, the large model of digital wisdom materia medica integrates three categories of massive data: Shouzheng (1000+ ancient books and translations, 90,000+ prescriptions, 40,000+ Chinese patent medicines, etc.), innovation (40 million + literature abstracts, 3 million + natural products, 20,000 + target gene pathway information, etc.), industrialization (100,000 + clinical programs, 160,000 + traditional Chinese medicine patents and pharmacopoeia policy guidelines, etc.).

Based on the pre-training of billions of molecular structures and fine-tuning of 3.5 million unique natural product molecule data, the "Digital Intelligence Materia Medica" computing model can more accurately perform calculation tasks such as "characterizing natural product molecules and improving downstream attribute prediction", and can be combined with corresponding algorithms to quickly realize the screening and optimization of medicinal materials and compounds. The large model deeply excavates and integrates the connotation and connection of classical theories of traditional Chinese medicine, pharmacology of traditional Chinese medicine, compatibility of traditional Chinese medicine and clinical application, and realizes the two goals of "from disease to prescription" and "from prescription to disease" through three application modes: "intelligent question answering", "interactive computing" and "document generation".

Yan Kaijing introduced that the key content of the research and development of digital intelligence Chinese medicine is "reasoning" and "drug search", which needs to integrate the theory of traditional Chinese medicine with modern medicine, systems biology and other disciplines, which is a complex system engineering. In recent years, Tasly has used AI to empower traditional Chinese medicine to "reason and find medicine", that is, to create a new paradigm of "digital intelligence Chinese medicine" research and development through the two paths of "from prescription to disease and from disease to prescription".

In terms of the reasoning of "from prescription to disease", Tasly has accumulated a large amount of traditional Chinese medicine data in years of research and development practice, and independently developed and created the Xingdouyun system, which can form a digital analysis method of traditional Chinese medicine based on existing prescriptions and marketed products, using knowledge graph and a number of technologies, for "prescriptions", such as "pharmacodynamic components", "targets of action" and "gene network".

In terms of "from disease to prescription", Tasly and Huawei have jointly built a large model of "Digital Intelligence Materia Medica", which is an upgrade and iteration of the existing Xingdouyun system and helps the innovation and research and development of traditional Chinese medicine.

"We have accumulated a wealth of theoretical knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine in the early stage, and combined Tasly's accumulated traditional Chinese medicine R&D data, production data, and market data with HUAWEI CLOUD big data, so that we can more easily realize the 'six modernizations and three refinements' on the basis of Xingdou Cloud." Yan Kaijing said that on the one hand, Huawei-based language models provide better tools for analyzing traditional Chinese medicine. On the other hand, Huawei's Pangu molecular model can help form an exclusive natural medicine model based on the data of nearly 3.5 million natural medicine molecules accumulated over the years, and provide the possibility to build a compound drug model.

Yan Kaijing said that version 1.0 of the digital intelligence Materia Medica model promotes evidence mining, auxiliary decision-making and efficiency improvement of the whole R&D chain of traditional Chinese medicine compounds, medicinal materials and ingredients from screening, optimization to clinical through three modes: intelligent question and answer, document generation and interactive computing, which has taken an important step towards the realization of digital intelligence Chinese medicine and helped the mainland Chinese medicine industry to keep pace with the times.

(Editor: Cao Xueping Review: Tong Haihua Proofreader: Zhang Guogang)