Drugs used in today’s operating rooms are safe when administered by specialists, but anesthetics that don’t require such expertise would make surgery less onerous and expensive for patients, as well as more accessible in under-resourced environments, including rural areas, developing countries and war zones, where a lack of anesthesiologists and their monitoring and life-support equipment often limits patients’ access to needed procedures.
UCSF pharmaceutical chemistry professors Brian Shoichet, Ph.D. ’91, and Jason Sello, Ph.D., are leading a project that combines artificial intelligence, molecule design and innovative animal models to evaluate six million small molecules for anesthetic properties. The massive search spans a broad range of chemicals, raising the possibility that some may act through undiscovered, potentially safer biological mechanisms. The researchers expect to put about 10 drugs on the path to clinical trials, which would open the floodgates in a field that has moved at a trickle.
“We’re at a moment where everything is coming together to accelerate progress. There is a consilience of multiple technologies,” says Sello. “And at UC, we have the right group of people with the right skills and the right interests to bring them together.”
Tags:
AI,
anesthesia,
research,
UCSF
June 24, 2025 •
