Using artificial intelligence scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new type of antibiotic to kill dangerous drug-resistant bacteria.
The team from MIT using a machine learning algorithm have identified a powerful new antibiotic compound. In laboratory tests, the drug killed many of the world’s most problematic disease-causing bacteria, including some strains that are resistant to all known antibiotics. The discovery was made using an algorithm inspired by the architecture of the human brain.
The AI technology checked more than 100 million chemical compounds in a matter of days to pick out potential antibiotics that kill bacteria.
James Collins, Professor of Medical Engineering and Science said “We wanted to develop a platform that would allow us to harness the power of artificial intelligence to usher in a new age of antibiotic drug discovery.”
“Our approach revealed this amazing molecule which is arguably one of the more powerful antibiotics that has been discovered.”
“We’re facing a growing crisis around antibiotic resistance, and this situation is being generated by both an increasing number of pathogens becoming resistant to existing antibiotics, and an anemic pipeline in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries for new antibiotics.”
In their new study, the researchers also identified several other promising antibiotic candidates, which they plan to test further. They believe the model could also be used to design new drugs, based on what it has learned about chemical structures that enable drugs to kill bacteria.
The researchers designed their model to look for chemical features that make molecules effective at killing E. coli. To do so, they trained the model on about 2,500 molecules, including about 1,700 FDA-approved drugs and a set of 800 natural products with diverse structures and a wide range of bioactivities.
Once the model was trained, the researchers tested it on the Broad Institute’s Drug Repurposing Hub, a library of about 6,000 compounds. The model picked out one molecule that was predicted to have strong antibacterial activity and had a chemical structure different from any existing antibiotics.
This molecule, which the researchers decided to call halicin, after the fictional artificial intelligence system from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has been previously investigated as possible diabetes drug. The researchers tested it against dozens of bacterial strains isolated from patients and grown in lab dishes, and found that it was able to kill many that are resistant to treatment.
Roy Kishony, a professor of biology and computer science at Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology) “This groundbreaking work signifies a paradigm shift in antibiotic discovery and indeed in drug discovery more generally. Beyond in silica screens, this approach will allow using deep learning at all stages of antibiotic development, from discovery to improved efficacy and toxicity through drug modifications and medicinal chemistry.”
