New types of antibiotics are being developed using an AI machine-learning approach that scans a pool of more than 100 million molecules, including one that works against strains of bacteria previously considered untreatable, according to a recent account in Nature.
The antibiotic, called halicin (named after the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey), is believed to be the first discovered with AI. While AI had been applied to parts of the antibiotic-discovery process, the researchers said this was the first time AI had helped to identify a completely new kind of antibiotic from scratch. Led by synthetic biologist Jim Collins at MIT, the paper is published in Cell.
New drugs are needed to fight growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics worldwide, resulting in infections that could kill 10 million people per year by 2050. New drug development has slowed over the past several decades. “People keep finding the same molecules over and over,” stated Collins. “We need novel chemistries with novel mechanisms of action.”
The team identified candidates and also validated promising molecules in animal tests, which Jacob Durrant, a computational biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, called remarkable. He sees the approachable to be applied to drugs used to treat cancer or neurodegenerative diseases, he said.
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