Scientists in Canada and them USAusing your potential artificial intelligence (AI)they opened a new antibiotic who can resist one deadly species of superbugs.
In particular, they isolated themselves. thousands of possible chemicalsthat have been tested in the lab. The result was a powerful experimental antibiotic called abaucinwhich, according to the BBC, will require a series of additional tests before it can be used.
The researchers say that artificial intelligence can greatly accelerate the discovery of new drugs.
Brake super microbes
Antibiotics can kill bacteria, but new drugs have been in short supply for decades, making it difficult to treat bacteria as they develop resistance.
It is estimated that more than a million people a year die from antibiotic-resistant infections.
The researchers focused on one of the most problematic types of bacteria: Acinetobacter baumanniiwhich can cause pneumonia.
It is one of the three supermicrobacteria World Health Organization recognized as “critical” threat and often escapes the protection provided by a range of antibiotics, causing problems in hospitals and nursing homes where it can survive on surfaces and medical equipment.
OUR Dr. Jonathan Stokesfrom McMaster University, characterized this bacterium as “public danger number one.”
Artificial intelligence
To find a new antibiotic, researchers first had to “teach” it to AI. They took thousands of drugs whose exact chemical structure was known and manually tested them against Acinetobacter baumannii to see which one can slow it down or kill it.
This information was passed on to the AI so that it could learn the chemical characteristics of the drugs that could kill the bacterium. The AI then made a list 6680 connections the effectiveness of which was unknown.
Results – published in Nature Chemical Biologyshowed that it took the AI an hour and a half to generate the list. Researchers after a series of tests came to nine possible antibiotics. One of them was a powerful antibiotic. abaucin.
Laboratory experiments have shown that this antibiotic can cure infected mice, but it can also kill individuals. acinetobacter Baumann from patients.
The next step is to refine the drug in the laboratory and then conduct clinical trials.
According to scientists, the first artificial intelligence antibiotics will be available by prescription until 2030.
Source: BBC
Source: Kathimerini
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