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posted by janrinok on Monday February 24 2020, @03:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the genetic-algorithms dept.

Powerful antibiotic discovered using machine learning for first time:

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.

“In terms of antibiotic discovery, this is absolutely a first,” said Regina Barzilay, a senior researcher on the project and specialist in machine learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“I think this is one of the more powerful antibiotics that has been discovered to date,” added James Collins, a bioengineer on the team at MIT. “It has remarkable activity against a broad range of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.”

Antibiotic resistance arises when bacteria mutate and evolve to sidestep the mechanisms that antimicrobial drugs use to kill them. Without new antibiotics to tackle resistance, 10 million lives around the world could be at risk each year from infections by 2050, the Cameron government’s O’Neill report warned.

To find new antibiotics, the researchers first trained a “deep learning” algorithm to identify the sorts of molecules that kill bacteria. To do this, they fed the program information on the atomic and molecular features of nearly 2,500 drugs and natural compounds, and how well or not the substance blocked the growth of the bug E coli.

Once the algorithm had learned what molecular features made for good antibiotics, the scientists set it working on a library of more than 6,000 compounds under investigation for treating various human diseases. Rather than looking for any potential antimicrobials, the algorithm focused on compounds that looked effective but unlike existing antibiotics. This boosted the chances that the drugs would work in radical new ways that bugs had yet to develop resistance to.

Jonathan Stokes, the first author of the study, said it took a matter of hours for the algorithm to assess the compounds and come up with some promising antibiotics. One, which the researchers named “halicin” after Hal, the astronaut-bothering AI in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, looked particularly potent.

Writing in the journal Cell, the researchers describe how they treated numerous drug-resistant infections with halicin, a compound that was originally developed to treat diabetes, but which fell by the wayside before it reached the clinic.

Jonathan M. Stokes, Kevin Yang, Kyle Swanson, Wengong Jin, Andres Cubillos-Ruiz, Nina M. Donghia, Craig R. MacNair, Shawn French, et. al. A Deep Learning Approach to Antibiotic Discovery Cell, Vol. 180, Issue 4, p688–702.e13 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.021


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  • (Score: 2) by Booga1 on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:19AM (2 children)

    by Booga1 (6333) on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:19AM (#962217)

    Well, much like chemotherapy, I guess it's an alternative is to letting the infection kill you outright.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:41AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:41AM (#962289)

    everyone I know who did chemo, died quickly thereafter; within a month

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:48PM (#962432)

      i bet they breathed oxygen too.