Drugmaker CEOs Say AI Alone Can't Cure Diseases, Challenge Silicon Valley's Bold Predictions: 'To Say AI Is Going to Cure Cancer...'

Pharmaceutical executives say human biology is too complicated for artificial intelligence (AI) to cure disease on its own, with AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN) CEO Pascal Soriot saying, "Disease is complicated, biology is complicated."

No drug designed by AI has won Food and Drug Administration clearance, and drugmaker executives say AI helps researchers pick targets and identify suitable patients but cannot resolve biology’s unknowns alone, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Soriot noted that, “to say AI is going to cure cancer is maybe a little bit of a jump,” the report added.

Silicon Valley’s Big AI Cure Claims

Anthropic (NASDAQ: ANT) CEO Dario Amodei posted on X in September that curing most human disease in five to 10 years may be possible. Anthropic has bought a stealth-mode biotech and a one-person biotech, and OpenAI bought an AI drug-discovery biotech in October.

Today we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism. Its precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance is not yet clear, but at minimum it is work I would have been proud… https://t.co/hyzhzirNJe

— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 23, 2026

Drugmakers Push Back

Jeff Leiden, executive chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: VRTX) recalled a tech leader claiming AI would cure 90% of human disease in seven years. "That’s complete BS," he said. Vertex used roughly 50 AI companies to comb through its data set of 10,000 drug compounds, and none generated a working drug, he said, according to the report.

Leiden was not the only research leader to question how far AI can go on its own. George Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: REGN) said AI will assist in the lab but will not "just miraculously come in and tell us how to do things," the report added.

Consultants who track the field point to a specific scientific hurdle. McKinsey & Company senior partner Alex Devereson, who focuses on AI in drug development, said around a quarter of mid-stage to late-stage drug failures trace to "off-target" safety problems, meaning unintended effects in the body, which current AI models struggle to predict, the report noted.

Where AI Fits Into Pharma’s Future

AstraZeneca has already announced a collaboration with Insitro, an AI-driven drug developer, to discover treatments for complex liver and heart diseases, paying $40 million upfront. Insitro could also receive about $1.46 billion in milestone payments, for a potential total near $1.5 billion.

Generate Biomedicines co-founder and CTO Gevorg Grigoryan had said in an email interview that Nvidia Corp‘s (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPUs are "essential" for designing AI-generated medicines, but that "compute alone is not a differentiator." He said the companies most likely to lead AI drug discovery will combine computing with "proprietary biological data, experimental measurement scale, and the ability to close the loop between generation and measurement."

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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