Using artificial intelligence, researchers say, they’ve found a new type of antibiotic that works against a particularly menacing drug-resistant bacteria. When they tested the antibiotic on the skin of mice that were experimentally infected with the superbug, it controlled the growth of the bacteria, suggesting that the method could be used to create antibiotics tailored to fight other drug-resistant pathogens. What’s more, the compound identified by AI worked in a way that stymied only the problem pathogen. It didn’t seem to kill the many other species of beneficial bacteria that live in the gut or on the skin, making it a rare narrowly targeted agent. If more antibiotics worked this precisely, the researchers said, it could prevent bacteria from becoming resistant in the first place. The study was published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. “It’s incredibly promising,” said Dr. Cesar de la Fuente, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perlman School of Medicine who is also using AI to find new treatments but was not involved in the new research. De la Fuente says this type of approach to finding new drugs is an emerging field that researchers have been testing since about 2018. It dramatically cuts the time it takes to sort through thousands of promising compounds.
Full story : A new antibiotic, discovered with artificial intelligence, may defeat a dangerous superbug.
