AI-powered robot finds common soap ingredient may combat malaria

Around half of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria and it causes around half a million deaths each year. However, the parasites that cause malaria are becoming more resistant to the drugs we currently use to combat them, meaning the global malaria risk stands to increase if we don't develop new drugs quickly enough. Well new research published recently in Scientific Reports finds that a common chemical used in everything from soap and toothpaste to clothing and furniture might be an effective treatment, and it was done with the help of AI. Many popular antimalarial drugs target a specific enzyme found in malaria-causing parasites, an enzyme important for the parasites' growth. So researchers used AI-powered Robot Scientist Eve to screen a slew of FDA-approved compounds to see how well they were able to inhibit that enzyme and it found that triclosan was able to inhibit the enzyme from two different species of malaria-causing parasites, including variants that had developed resistance to common malaria treatments. The researchers then tested triclosan against the enzyme in a number of different ways in order to confirm its effectiveness, and that, combined with previous research showing that the chemical can also inhibit an additional enzyme found in these parasites, led the researchers to conclude that triclosan may be a useful therapeutic with multiple targets.