The discovery and development of new medicines is expensive, time-consuming, and often inefficient, with many failures along the way. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), language models (LMs) have changed the landscape of natural language processing (NLP), offering possibilities to transform treatment development more effectively. Here, we summarize advances in AI-powered LMs and their potential to aid drug discovery and development. We highlight opportunities for AI-powered LMs in target identification, clinical design, regulatory decision-making, and pharmacovigilance. We specifically emphasize the potential role of AI-powered LMs for developing new treatments for Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) strategies, including drug repurposing, which can be extrapolated to other infectious diseases that have the potential to cause pandemics. Finally, we set out the remaining challenges and propose possible solutions for improvement.

新药的发现和开发是昂贵、耗时的，而且往往效率低下，在此过程中有许多失败。在人工智能 (AI) 的支持下，语言模型 (LM) 改变了自然语言处理 (NLP) 的格局，为更有效地转变治疗发展提供了可能性。在这里，我们总结了人工智能 LM 的进展及其在帮助药物发现和开发方面的潜力。我们强调了 AI 驱动的 LM 在目标识别、临床设计、监管决策和药物警戒方面的机会。我们特别强调 AI 驱动的 LM 在开发 2019 年冠状病毒 (COVID-19) 新疗法策略方面的潜在作用，包括药物再利用，这可以外推到可能导致大流行的其他传染病。最后，