An MIT team used artificial intelligence to design novel antibiotics, two of which showed promise against MRSA and gonorrhea. With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat bacteria: multi-drug-resistant and (MRSA). The team used two approaches. First, they directed generative AI to design molecules based on a chemical fragment their model had predicted would show antimicrobial activity, and second, they let the algorithms generate molecules without constraints. They designed more than 36 million possible compounds this way and computationally screened them for antimicrobial properties. The top candidates they discovered are structurally distinct from any existing antibiotics, and they appear to work by novel mechanisms that disrupt bacterial cell membranes.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – IBM scientists have utilized artificial intelligence to help speed up development of molecules for potential use in new "novel antibiotics" that are needed as the spread of antibiotic resistance grows and the need for new drugs increases. In a blog post and a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the IBM team said the system would help pace the way to "accelerated discovery." "[O]ur IBM Research team has developed an AI system that can help speed up the design of molecules for novel antibiotics. And it works," wrote Aleksandra Mojsilovic and Payel Das in the blog. Noting the rise of resistance to antibiotics, the two said the threat "is no joke. We need new antibiotics, and we need them fast."

After returning from summer vacation in September 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming found a colony of bacteria he'd left in his London lab had sprouted a fungus. Curiously, wherever the bacteria contacted the fungus, their cell walls broke down and they died. Fleming guessed the fungus was secreting something lethal to the bacteria--and the rest is history. Fleming's discovery of penicillin and its later isolation, synthesis, and scaling in the 1940s released a flood of antibiotic discoveries in the next few decades. Bacteria and fungi had been waging an ancient war against each other, and the weapons they'd evolved over eons turned out to be humanity's best defense against bacterial infection and disease.

Researchers announced the breakthrough discovery of a new type of antibiotic compound that is capable of killing many types of harmful bacteria, including deadly antibiotic-resistant strains, and published their findings in Cell on February 20. What makes this remarkable is that the researchers, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, and McMaster University, used machine learning (a form of artificial intelligence) to discover the new antibiotic--an achievement that heralds the disruption of traditional research and drug development processes deployed by pharmaceutical industry behemoths. Antibiotic resistance is a global threat that is exacerbated by the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, the proliferation of antimicrobials in consumer products, and over-prescription in health care. Though estimating the future impact is challenging, one report predicted that by 2050, 10 million deaths per year could result from antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) infections. Combating the problem of antimicrobial resistance requires bringing novel compounds to market.

For decades, discovering novel antibiotics meant digging through the same patch of dirt. Biologists spent countless hours screening soil-dwelling microbes for properties known to kill harmful bacteria. But as superbugs resistant to existing antibiotics have spread widely, breakthroughs were becoming as rare as new places to dig. Now, artificial intelligence is giving scientists a reason to dramatically expand their search into databases of molecules that look nothing like existing antibiotics. A study published Thursday in the journal Cell describes how researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used machine learning to identify a molecule that appears capable of countering some of the world's most formidable pathogens.