Researchers in Canada and the United States are celebrating the breakthrough they made with the help of artificial intelligence, writes the BBC.
Thanks to this technology, the researchers were able to find a type of antibiotic that is effective against the so-called superbug Acinetobacter baumannii. Superbugs are multiresistant bacteria, that is, resistant to two or more antibiotics.
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One of the researchers behind the study, Jonathan Stokes of McMaster University, calls these superbugs “Public Enemy No. 1,” because they are often resistant to nearly all types of antibiotics.
The researchers fed the AI information about which known chemical compounds are effective against bacteria.
It took KI an hour and a half to produce a short list of relevant chemicals, after reviewing tens of millions of chemical compounds, the BBC writes.
The results have been published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
“The results support the hypothesis that artificial intelligence can significantly accelerate and expand our search for new antibiotics,” Professor James Collins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells MED.
Lab tests and clinical trials remain before an antibiotic hits the market. Stokes assumes that the first AI antibiotic will not be prescribed until 2030.
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