By Chioma Obinna

In an era where developing a single new drug can cost billions and take over a decade, Dr. Peter Somto Obi is pioneering approaches that could transform medicine as we know it. Using a powerful combination of advanced computer simulations and artificial intelligence, Dr. Obi is helping to revolutionize how scientists discover life-saving drugs.

“The traditional approach to drug discovery is like searching for a needle in a haystack—expensive, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful,” explains Dr. Obi currently working as a scientist at Psivant Therapeutics. “We’re using computational biophysics and AI to make the needle bigger and the haystack smaller.This way, we can drive drug discovery by testing our ideas using computers which can help us prioritize what to make and test in the lab.”

Dr. Obi’s journey to becoming a leader in this field began in Nigeria, where he graduated at the top of his pharmacy class, earning national recognition for academic excellence. His exceptional talent led him directly to a doctoral program at Washington State University, where he graduated with highest honors.

One of Dr. Obi’s most significant breakthroughs at Washington State University came through his research on how drugs interact with cells in our bodies. While traditional approaches focused narrowly on how drugs bind to specific proteins, Dr. Obi discovered that the cell membrane, the fatty layer surrounding cells, plays a crucial and previously overlooked role.

“It’s like we’ve been studying how a key fits into a lock while ignoring the door frame that holds the lock in place,” Dr. Obi explains. “The cell membrane actively influences how drugs work, not just the protein targets inside cells.”

This discovery, published in the world’s top medicinal chemistry journal, has profound implications for developing new medicines. By incorporating cell membrane interactions into drug design, scientists can now devise more effective strategies for creating novel medications that target a wide range of diseases.

Perhaps even more revolutionary is Dr. Obi’s development of an innovative artificial intelligence system that dramatically reduces the computational cost of drug discovery. His method uses AI to predict crucial drug properties while requiring only one-third of the computing power traditionally needed.

For pharmaceutical companies screening millions of potential drug compounds, this breakthrough could generate savings of hundreds of millions of dollars per research program. In an industry where research costs have skyrocketed to ~$100billion annually, such efficiency gains could ultimately lead to more affordable medicines and treatments for previously neglected diseases.

“What Dr. Obi has created is essentially a highly sophisticated shortcut,” explains a pharmaceutical industry analyst. “Instead of calculating every step of a complex process, his AI system can predict the outcome with remarkable accuracy using just a fraction of the data.”

The impact of Dr. Obi’s research extends across multiple disease areas. His work has been cited by researchers investigating conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s and cancer to chronic lung disease and inflammation and his publications have also gained attention worldwide, ranking in the top quarter of research outputs tracked globally. Already, pharmaceutical giant Takeda has cited some of Dr. Obi’s research in theirclinical trial studies, showing how quickly his theoretical work is being applied to real-world medicine.

As artificial intelligence transforms scientific research—recently recognized with Nobel Prizes in both Chemistry and Physics—Dr. Obi’s pioneering approaches position him as a leader in this rapidly evolving field.

At Psivant Therapeutics, he leads efforts to use computational biophysics and AI in designing new drug molecules, some of which are already being tested in laboratories. His work exemplifies how computation and artificial intelligence are driving the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

“The future of medicine will be increasingly shaped by our ability to simulate and predict how drugs behave in the body,” says Dr. Obi. “Using these computational tools, we can potentially discover treatments for diseases that have resisted traditional approaches.”

For millions of patients awaiting new treatments for challenging conditions, that transformation offers new hope. And for Dr. Obi, whose work bridges theoretical computer models and practical medicine, it’s a reminder that in the modern world, some of the most important medical discoveries happen not in test tubes, but in algorithms.