Researchers Create New Antibiotics Using Artificial Intelligence

• Researchers at MIT have created antibiotics against MRSA and gonorrhea.
• The artificial intelligence helps find new molecules to combat superbugs.
• Further research is needed before clinical trials can begin.

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The research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) presented two new potential antibiotics that could combat drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). These drugs were created using artificial intelligence technology that projected their atoms atom by atom.

Research published in the journal Cell showed that the new compounds were effective in laboratory and experimental tests on animals. However, for clinical trials, they need several years of additional development.

The use of artificial intelligence in antibiotic development could open a new era in this field, as traditional methods of discovering new drugs do not yield desired results. Currently, infections, resistant to treatment, kill more than a million lives annually.

Researchers analyzed over 36 million compounds to find new molecules that could kill bacteria. The artificial intelligence was trained based on the structures of known compounds and their influence on different types of bacteria. After this, more than 10 million candidates were created, of which nearly 200 were found to be promising, and 24 were synthesized in the laboratory.

Although the new antibiotics promise significant progress in the fight against superbugs, researchers indicate economic problems related to the development of new drugs, as new antibiotics need to be used in such a way as to preserve their effectiveness.

Researchers emphasize that there is still much work to be done before these compounds can reach the stage of clinical trials, but already the results of their work indicate a promising direction in the development of new drugs.

Tags: Technology/AI/Research