Which is useless, because you can't run 166 billion clinical trials.
But you could run half a dozen if there's a strong chance one of them will be a success. Filtering the list down to 100 molecules from 166 billion, some of which can be further eliminated by human evaluation without the expense of clinical trials, is actually useful.
You still ultimately have to do the clinical trial, because there is no substitute for empiricism.
> That's the part that takes years and tens of millions of dollars.
It doesn't matter if it takes tens of millions of dollars if the result is a billion dollar drug.
Which is useless, because you can't run 166 billion clinical trials.
But you could run half a dozen if there's a strong chance one of them will be a success. Filtering the list down to 100 molecules from 166 billion, some of which can be further eliminated by human evaluation without the expense of clinical trials, is actually useful.
You still ultimately have to do the clinical trial, because there is no substitute for empiricism.
> That's the part that takes years and tens of millions of dollars.
It doesn't matter if it takes tens of millions of dollars if the result is a billion dollar drug.