With the help of AI, scientists have discovered a new antibiotic that destroys one of the most dangerous bacteria

With the help of AI, scientists have discovered a new antibiotic that destroys one of the most dangerous bacteria



With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have discovered a new antibiotic that can destroy one of the deadliest bacteria in the world. This is reported by the BBC with reference to research by McMaster University. Artificial intelligence helped scientists from Canada and the United States to choose the right chemicals. As a result, scientists discovered a powerful experimental antibiotic called abaucin, which needs additional tests before use. According to the study, this scientific breakthrough could also be the beginning of a solution to the global problem of resistance to antimicrobial drugs. The researchers focused on one of the most problematic types of bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, which can infect wounds and cause pneumonia. It is one of three “superbugs” that the World Health Organization has identified as a “critical” threat. This species is often resistant to numerous antibiotics and causes many problems in hospitals and nursing homes, where it can survive on surfaces and medical equipment. Photo: alexrathsDepositphotos Dr. Jonathan Stokes of McMaster University describes this bacterium as “public enemy number one” because it is “resistant to almost all antibiotics.” According to the study, discovering new antibiotics against A. baumannii is very difficult using conventional screening approaches. To find a new antibiotic, researchers first had to train AI. They took thousands of drugs whose exact chemical structure was known and manually tested them against Acinetobacter baumannii to see which ones might slow or kill it. This information was fed into the AI ​​so that it could learn the chemical properties of drugs that could attack the problematic bacteria. Then artificial intelligence selected from a list of more than 6,600 compounds, the effectiveness of which was unknown, those that were most suitable. The results, published in Nature Chemical Biology, showed that it took the artificial intelligence an hour and a half to create the shortlist. The researchers tested 240 antibiotics in the laboratory and identified nine potential antibiotics. One of them was the incredibly powerful antibiotic abaucin. Laboratory experiments have shown that it can heal infected wounds in mice and is able to kill samples of bacteria. The next step is to improve the drug in the laboratory, and then conduct clinical trials. The experimental antibiotic did not affect other types of bacteria, but only A. baumannii. Many antibiotics kill bacteria indiscriminately. The researchers believe that abaucin’s precision will make it harder for drug resistance to emerge and could lead to fewer side effects. “Artificial intelligence increases the speed, and in an ideal world, decreases the cost, with which we can discover new classes of antibiotics that we desperately need,” Dr. Stokes told me. Read also: Antibiotics by e-prescription: the Ministry of Health refuted myths about the sale of drugs



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