Researchers in Canada and the United States have come together to utilize the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to find novel antibiotics. This has been an ongoing search due to antibiotic resistance. With the overuse of antibiotics over the years, certain bacteria have grown resistant and antibiotics are no longer effective.
The process of developing an antibiotic can take 10 to 15 years and most start showing signs of resistance within that time. Using AI to expedite the discovery part of this method will make finding antibiotics easier. A database is reviewed by AI that holds the chemical structures of thousands of known drugs and their effectiveness against Acinetobacter baumannii. In just 90 minutes, AI was able to evaluate 6,680 compounds with unknown effectiveness against the superbug. From there, it compiled a list of candidates to further study. Out of 240 compounds, only nine ha
d potential antibiotics and only one had the strongest antibacterial properties against Acinetobacter baumannii. The name of this compound is abaucin and it showed promising results when tested against infected wounds of mice and successfully kill A. baumannii. It has been shown to have no other impact on other bacteria species.
Researchers plan to continue using AI to speed up the discovery of novel antibiotics. They want to dive into problematic bacteria species such as S. aureus and P. aeruginosa in order to expand the range of available antibiotics to treat drug-resistant infections.
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