The X2 Project conducted a workshop on the future of science at National University of Singapore on July 25, 2008.

During a discussion of in silico drug development, several people who work on whole system biological simulations and other complex computer simulations were very skeptical that we would build simulations that could replace animal models or human clinical trials in the next 50-100 years. They emphasized a couple things.

• First, the incredible complexity of these systems makes this a daunting problem.
• Second, the models that do exist of chemical or signal pathways, cells, etc., are created inductively, rather than deductively: they're not implementations of physical models or chemical formulae, but are hand-crafted around real data. This means that integrating separate models into larger models-- creating the pharmaceutical equivalent of a grand unified theory-- is impossible.
• Finally, the accuracy rates of these simulations is lower than drug development requires: they're around 70-80%, but clinical trials need 99.5% reliability.