Given the increased awareness and concern that the corona virus has given us in relation to the spread of harmful diseases, and as part of our ongoing effort to bring interesting articles to our readers about advancement in technology and AI, this article from the Guardian seems very relevant now.
A powerful antibiotic that kills some of the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria in the world has been discovered using artificial intelligence. The drug works in a different way to existing antibacterials and is the first of its kind to be found by setting AI loose on vast digital libraries of pharmaceutical compounds.
Tests showed that the drug wiped out a range of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, including acinetobacter baumannii and enterobacteriaceae, two of the three high-priority pathogens that the World Health Organization ranks as “critical” for new antibiotics to target.
To hunt for more new drugs, the team next turned to a massive digital database of about 1.5bn compounds. They set the algorithm working on 107m of these. Three days later, the program returned a shortlist of 23 potential antibiotics, of which two appear to be particularly potent. The scientists now intend to search more of the database.
Ai will continue to have large impacts on all our lives so it is very pleasing to see when these breakthroughs offer significant health advantages.
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