Researchers at Canada’s McMaster University used AI to discover a promising new drug.
Scientists from McMaster University in Canada have used artificial intelligence to discover a new antibiotic-resistant “superbug” treatment. This is a promising breakthrough in the treatment of one of the most difficult to treat and most dangerous antibiotic resistant diseases.
The promising new treatment was discovered within a few hours of the use of the AI technology.
The research team published a paper about their use of artificial intelligence to discover a superbug treatment in the Nature Chemical Biology journal. In that study, the researchers stated that within hours, they were able to use the AI to identify the drug that could treat the superbug. They added that this type of result could revolutionize the discovery of antibiotic drugs.
Advancements in the development of antibiotics are critical in today’s medicine, which is already fighting a losing battle against many forms of increasingly resistant bacteria. Bacteria are developing antibiotics resistances at an astounding rate that is far faster than the development of new drugs.
That said, through the use of AI the way the researchers have employed it, humanity may be able to accelerate drug discovery to the point that one day bacteria might not be able to keep up, said one of the authors of the study.
The researchers used artificial intelligence to identify a treatment for Acinetobacter baumannii.
The Acinetobacter baumannii bacterium is among the most difficult to treat and drug resistant germs in the world.
“Acinetobacter is one of the most, if not the most, urgent bacterial pathogens for which new antibiotics are required,” said McMaster University assistant professor of biochemistry Jonathan Stokes, who led the research. “That’s the logic behind why we embarked on this project.”
Artificial intelligence is proving useful for this type of task due to its rapid capacity for analyzing tremendous amounts of information in substantially less time than it would take a human. In this case, the researchers used artificial intelligence to algorithmically screen almost 7,000 chemicals to see if any had the potential to be useful in treating the infection.
That number is a “relatively small set of chemicals” for AI, said the researchers, who were happily surprised that they not only discovered a potential treatment in a matter of hours (through a process that would have taken weeks for humans to accomplish), the drug also seemed to fight acinetobacter while simultaneously ignoring other bacteria that was potentially helpful to the body.