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Artificial intelligence has been used to identify a new antibiotic capable of killing a type of bacteria responsible for many drug-resistant infections.
The new antibiotic was identified by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and McMaster University from a library of nearly 7,000 potential drug compounds.
The researchers used a machine-learning model they had trained to assess whether a chemical compound would inhibit the growth of acinetobacter baumannii.
James Collins, from MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Department of Biological Engineering, said the research supports the idea that “AI can significantly accelerate and expand our search for novel antibiotics”.
“I’m excited that this work shows that we can use AI to help combat problematic pathogens such as acinetobacter baumannii.”
Acinetobacter baumannii is often found in hospitals and can lead to pneumonia, meningitis and other serious illnesses.
Jonathan Stokes, an assistant professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster University, said acinetobacter can survive on hospital doorknobs and equipment for long periods of time, and it can take up antibiotic resistance genes from its environment.
“It’s really common now to find acinetobacter baumannii isolates that are resistant to nearly every antibiotic.”
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The researchers plan to use their modelling to identify potential antibiotics for other types of drug-resistant infections and hope such compounds will be developed for use in patients.
Their research is published in Nature Chemical Biology.
Artificial intelligence is also being used in the fight against breast cancer, helping scientists develop a model which could predict whether an aggressive branch of the disease will spread.
The…
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