A powerful antibiotic that kills some of the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria in the
world has been discovered using artificial intelligence.
The drug works in a different way to existing antibacterials and is the first of its kind to be found by setting AI loose on vast digital libraries of pharmaceutical compounds.
Tests showed that the drug wiped out a range of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, including Acinetobacter baumannii and Enterobacteriaceae, two of the three high-priority pathogens that the World Health Organization ranks as “critical” for new antibiotics to target. It has remarkable activity against a broad range of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
To find new antibiotics, the researchers first trained a deep learning algorithm to identify the sorts of molecules that kill bacteria. To do this, they fed the program information on the atomic and molecular features of nearly 2,500 drugs and natural compounds, and how well or not the substance blocked the growth of E coli.
Once the algorithm had learned what molecular features made for good antibiotics, the scientists set it working on a library of more than 6,000 compounds under investigation for treating various human diseases. Rather than looking for any potential antimicrobials, the algorithm focused on compounds that looked effective but unlike existing antibiotics. This boosted the chances that the drugs would work in radical new ways that bugs had yet to develop resistance to.
I think it's incredibly impressive what AI can do provided you're creative enough. It's only limited by your imagination. This is why it excites me so passionately. The ability to do some real good by harnessing our hardware and using our unlimited creativity to find solutions to real problems.
Comments