Treatments for new or drug-resistant infectious diseases may already be in our medicine cabinets, say the molecular biologists responsible for developing an artificial-intelligence system that can predict unknown antibiotic properties of existing drugs. The hope is that the work will result in an armoury of new treatments that can be rushed into service when standard treatments stop being effective or new pathogens arise. "In the case of new infectious diseases, there might be no time to develop a completely new drug from the ground up," says Artem Cherkasov of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, who made the proposal this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. However, if the new AI system suggests an existing drug might be an effective antibiotic, it could be quickly tested for efficacy, and then pushed into service, Cherkasov says. And because these drugs would have already been approved for use in people, they wouldn't have to go through all the clinical trials and lengthy regulatory approvals required of brand-new drugs.

The cure for an emerging outbreak may already be in your medicine cabinet. And with an artificial intelligence computer program he's creating, a Canadian researcher is honing in on that link. "By the time (an outbreak) occurs it's already too late to create a new drug from the ground up," says University of British Columbia chemist Artem Cherkasov. "The idea is when a new infection comes in or gets noticed, to use some of the existing substances and try them against the virus or pathogen." Cherkasov presented his program, now in the later stages of development, at an American Chemical Society meeting on Sunday in Boston.