AI + pharmacology – ETO Research Almanac

ETO Research Almanac

Between 2018 and 2023, researchers published roughly

5,000

English-language articles on AI + pharmacology

The global AI + pharmacology literature grew

243%

between 2018 and 2023

Articles on AI + pharmacology made up

<1%

of all articles on artificial intelligence

Authors from private companies contributed to

of AI + pharmacology articles

What counts as "AI + pharmacology" research?•How precise are these numbers?•What are the other caveats?

Explore relevant research in the Map of Science

Data last updated October 13, 2025

Vital signs

4,795
AI + pharmacology articles were released between 2018 and 2023 (estd.)
243%
growth in research between 2018 and 2023
<1%
of all artificial intelligence articles focused on AI + pharmacology

Citation impact

25
citations for the average AI + pharmacology article
20
citations for the average artificial intelligence article

Countries

22%
of AI + pharmacology articles have American authors
28%
have Chinese authors
15%
have European authors

Country	Articles (2018-2023)	Growth (2018-2023)	Global share	Citations per article
China	1,326	302%	28%	27.9
United States	1,050	145%	22%	40.3
India	517	573%	11%	18.8

Top-cited articles

Applications of machine learning in drug discovery and development
2019: Nature reviews. Drug discovery. 2,374 citations
ADMETlab 2.0: an integrated online platform for accurate and comprehensive predictions of ADMET properties
2021: Nucleic acids research. 2,029 citations
The rise of deep learning in drug discovery.
2018: Drug discovery today. 1,556 citations
DeepDTA: deep drug–target binding affinity prediction
2018: Bioinformatics (Oxford, England). 1,327 citations
Modeling polypharmacy side effects with graph convolutional networks
2018: bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). 1,262 citations
Artificial intelligence in drug discovery and development
2020: Drug discovery today. 1,158 citations
Artificial intelligence to deep learning: machine intelligence approach for drug discovery
2021: Molecular diversity. 1,107 citations
COVID-19: combining antiviral and anti-inflammatory treatments
2020: The Lancet. Infectious diseases. 1,018 citations
Pushing the Boundaries of Molecular Representation for Drug Discovery with the Graph Attention Mechanism
2019: Journal of medicinal chemistry. 866 citations
Machine learning in chemoinformatics and drug discovery.
2018: Drug discovery today. 850 citations

Research organizations

Top producers of AI + pharmacology research (by article count)

#1 Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)
#2 Central South University (China)
#3 Hunan University (China)

Organization	Articles (2018-2023)	Citations per article	Country
Chinese Academy of Sciences	108	39	China
Central South University	77	63.1	China
Hunan University	59	92.6	China

Patents and industry

9%
of AI + pharmacology articles are cited in patents
7%
of artificial intelligence articles are cited in patents
9%
of AI + pharmacology articles had authors from private companies (vs 6% of artificial intelligence articles in general)

Top industry organizations by publication count

Company	Articles (2018-2023)	Citations per article	Country
AstraZeneca	33	128.2	United Kingdom
Microsoft	16	34.9	United States
Tencent	16	167.4	China

Research subject classifications are based on work supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation under Grant No. G-2023-22358. For details on our sourcing, methodology, and limitations, see the tool documentation.