The first new antibiotics in 60 years have been discovered. Artificial intelligence helped with this

History is happening before our eyes, as artificial intelligence is developing at an alarming pace. From day to day, completely new technologies appear, the requirements of the labor market change dramatically, and new areas of life are being revolutionized.

Recently, a real breakthrough has been made in medicine, because with the help of artificial intelligence, scientists have just discovered a completely new type of antibiotics.

Artificial intelligence in the fight against harmful bacteria

The first discovery of a new type of antibiotics in over 60 years, thanks to the constantly developing capabilities of artificial intelligence, took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Scientists working at the university have discovered a new class of antibiotics that are able to fight drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria. This discovery is important because it concerns a chemical compound that can now be used to counteract bacteria that kill thousands of people around the world every year.

How AI fights bacteria

An extended deep machine learning model was used to develop a new antibiotic, based on very large data sets. In this way, artificial intelligence was able to predict the activity and toxicity of compounds considered as candidates for combating the harmful Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.

“It was crucial to understand what the models learn to make their predictions that certain molecules might be effective antibiotics. Our work with artificial intelligence has provided unprecedented methods that are time-efficient, resource-efficient, and chemically insightful,” said James Collins, one of the study’s authors and professor of medical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ).

Artificial intelligence is a solution to a serious problem

Data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show that approximately 150,000 cases occur in the European Union each year. cases of MSRA bacteria infection, and almost 35,000 people die each year due to drug-resistant infections. people.

The use of artificial intelligence, as in the case of the invention of an antibiotic against Staphylococcus aureus, is a method increasingly used to discover new types of drugs, predict their properties and optimize the processes of their further development.