Researchers use AI to uncover powerful new antibiotics for the first time

In a landmark discovery, a machine learning based AI has been used to uncover powerful new antibiotics that can kill resistant bacterial strains. Around 46,000 people dying each year in the UK alone from sepsis, with many cases being caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria that don't respond to treatment. The World Health Organisation has has identified several high-priority target pathogens that new antibiotics should target, but development of just one new drug can take years of research and millions of pounds in funding. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have now successfully used an AI to discover new antibiotic drugs for the first time. The team trained the AI on a data set of known antimicrobial molecules and then set it loose on a vast pharmaceutical database to assess the potential of each drug as an antibiotic. The process dramatically cuts the cost and time needed for drug discovery.