IBM's AI may lead to new antimicrobials, drugs, and materials

In a new study published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers at IBM say they've developed an AI model that can assist in the rapid design of antimicrobial peptides -- the building blocks of proteins. The researchers say that the model outperforms other AI methods at designing such peptides and increases the success rate of identifying a viable candidate by 10%. Antibiotics have transformed the world of medicine over the past century or so, but they've also been overused, leading to the emergence of bacteria with powerful resistance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. In fact, in the U.S. alone, nearly 3 million people die annually as a result of antibiotic-resistant infections.