Using an artificial intelligence algorithm, US researchers have identified a new antibiotic capable of killing a type of bacteria responsible for many drug-resistant infections.
- Scientists have used Artificial Intelligence to develop a new antibiotic.
- This antibiotic would be able to kill Acinetobacter baumannii, the cause of drug-resistant infections.
- AI is a major ally for researchers in their fight against antibiotic resistance.
Antibiotic resistance – when certain bacteria eventually become resistant to antibiotics – is a real health threat but scientists may have found a solution to deal with it using artificial intelligence (AI).
AI discovers treatment for A.baumanii bacteria
Indeed, researchers used an algorithm to identify a new antibiotic that could fight against drug-resistant infections. The results of their work are published in Nature Chemical Biology.
If developed for use in patients, this drug could help fight Acinetobacter baumannii (A.baumannii), a species of bacteria often found in hospitals that can cause pneumonia, meningitis and heart disease. other serious infections, can we read in Medical News which relays this discovery.
“Acinetobacter can survive on doorknobs and hospital equipment for long periods of time, and it can pick up antibiotic resistance genes from its environment. It is now very common to find isolates of A. baumannii that are resistant to almost all antibiotics“, says Jonathan Stokes, assistant professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster University.
AI: a tool to fight against antibiotic resistance
To identify this new drug, the researchers trained an AI to assess whether a chemical compound inhibits the growth of A. Baumann. After sifting through more than 100 million potential drug compounds, this algorithm produced a molecule that scientists called halicin, after the fictional artificial intelligence system of “2001: A Space Odyssey“.
This discovery reinforces the idea that AI can significantly accelerate and expand the search for new antibiotics: “I am delighted that this work shows that we can use AI to fight problematic pathogens such as A. baumannii“, reacted James Collins, Termeer Professor of Engineering and Medical Sciences at the Institute of Engineering and Medical Sciences (IMES) and the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT.
