Foundation models in drug discovery: Phenomenal growth today, transformative potential tomorrow?

During the past decade, AI has evolved rapidly. Within the field, there has been particular innovation in the area of foundation models -- general-purpose AI algorithms that can be adapted to a broad range of tasks. Recently, researchers have started exploring how these foundation models can be applied to pharmaceutical R&D. In this review, we survey the landscape of foundation models in drug discovery research. We show that, starting in 2022, the number of foundation models has been growing extremely rapidly, with >200 such models published to date. We demonstrate that these cover a broad range of applications, including target discovery, molecular property optimization, preclinical applications and others. We also discuss what foundation-model-powered drug discovery could look like in the future.