If NASA simulate physics (with programming) precisely enough to accurately calculate what will happen when they send a rocket into space, can biologists simulate the human body to discover what will happen when, for example, new medicine is introduced to it?

Question

I was thinking a reinforcement learning algorithm could be a trained in a simulated environment to find a cure for cancer, testing how every which complex process of a new medicine or even nanotechnology might react to its environment. Am I way off?

In: Biology

Answer 1

The simple answer is because it’s not that simple.

We could simulate nearly every organ’s function. What we couldn’t do is simulate the genetic differences between people and how the introduction of a new drug will react with each person’s physio-chemistry. Even if we made the perfect rendition of such a person, that simply doesn’t account for the variety amongst any two given people.

For example, if your cholesterol is high because you’re genetically predisposed to it, we’d have to create a “dummy” you to test out a drug on. What about medication you take to control your cholesterol? What about your diet? And of course, it’s not simply a matter of your genetics but how you’ve treated your body. What other illnesses have you had and how will *their* legacies react with a new drug for an entirely different problem.

Basically, we’d have to create a dummy version to cover, at the very least, the 10,000 most common physiological states for humans.