Once again, artificial intelligence (AI) is the main protagonist in the world of medicine, this time thanks to the invention of a new antibiotic that can kill a deadly hospital superbacterium classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “critical” threat.
Called Acinetobacter baumannii, it has the ability to resist treatment and pass on genetic material so that other bacteria also become resistant to drugs. It is commonly found in hospital settings and nursing homes, where it can survive on medical surfaces and equipment.
new antibiotic substance
Through AI, researchers from the United States and Canada discovered a new antibiotic substance, results of the work published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, a news outlet in which the use of an artificial intelligence algorithm to predict new molecular structures was detailed. antibacterial, which led them to identify a new compound, which they named abaucin.
“Using artificial intelligence, we can rapidly explore vast regions of chemical space, significantly increasing the chances of discovering fundamentally new antibacterial molecules,” explained Jonathan Stokes, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedicine and Biochemistry at McMaster University and a member of the group of scientists who carried out the study.
It was clarified that not everything is finished and that what will continue is the improvement and perfection of the drug before carrying out clinical trials with patients, so it is estimated that the first antibiotics discovered with the help of artificial intelligence cannot be commercialized before 2030.
Jonathan Stokes added: “We know that broad-spectrum antibiotics are sub-optimal and that bacteria have the ability to evolve and adapt to every trick we throw at them. Artificial intelligence methods give us the opportunity to vastly increase the speed with which we discover new antibiotics, at a reduced cost. This is an important avenue of exploration for new antibiotics.”