Using artificial intelligence, researchers have identified a new class of antibiotics that can kill bacteria resistant to standard drugs.
- Researchers used an AI model to artificially test 39,000 molecules and review 12 million substances already commercially available to try to see if there was a potential new antibiotic among them.
- The model identified two compounds which, when tested on mice infected with Staphylococcus aureus, reduced the presence of resistant bacteria by 10. A discovery that opens the way to clinical trials and new drugs.
- In 2019, 1.27 million deaths worldwide resulted from antibiotic resistance and 4.95 million were associated with it, according to an Inserm study.
“Very promising candidates.” Using artificial intelligence, a team of scientists has uncovered a new class of antibiotics capable of killing a drug-resistant bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, which alone was responsible for 1.1 million deaths in 2019, according to a investigation of Lancet.
Antibiotics that reduce the presence of staphylococcus aureus by ten
As part of their work, published in the journal Nature, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard, in the United States, used a deep learning model capable of making predictions about the potency of antibiotics – their antibacterial properties but also their possible toxicity on cells human. They were thus able to artificially test 39,000 compounds and review 12 million substances already available commercially to try to see if there was, among them, a potential new antibiotic.
The AI model made it possible to identify “two compounds, from the same class, which appear to be very promising antibiotic candidates”can we read in a communicated. After being tested on mice infected with Staphylococcus aureus, it turned out that each of these compounds had reduced the presence of resistant bacteria by 10. “[Ils] appear to kill bacteria by disrupting their ability to maintain an electrochemical gradient across their cell membranes”specify the researchers.
New molecules with minimal adverse effects
Note, moreover, that this class of antibiotics is not “not toxic to human cells”, because “the molecules attack bacterial cell membranes selectively, in a way that does not suffer substantial damage in human cell membranes.” The adverse effects on the human body are therefore “minimal”.
With this new family of molecules, which until now was not known for its antimicrobial activity, the team of researchers hopes to pave the way for future clinical trials and drugs effective against all types of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, associated with nearly 5 million deaths worldwide.
