Scientists have discovered a drug that can fight drug-resistant infections. And they used artificial intelligence to do it.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Canada’s McMaster University used machine learning algorithms to identify a new antibiotic that can kill certain bacteria that cause many drug-resistant infections. bottom.
This compound kills Acinetobacter baumannii, a type of bacteria commonly found in hospitals. It can cause pneumonia, meningitis, and other serious infections.
This organism is also a major cause of infections among wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Researchers at MIT and McMaster Universities have used artificial intelligence algorithms to develop a new antibiotic that can kill a type of bacteria (Acinetobacter baumannii, pink) responsible for many drug-resistant infections. identified. (Christine Danilov/MIT; Acinetobacter baumannii Image credit: CDC)
Over the past decades, many pathogens have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, while few new antibiotics have been developed.
In a release, MIT said the researchers used machine learning models trained to evaluate whether a compound would inhibit bacterial growth from a catalog of nearly 7,000 potential drug compounds. He said he had identified the drug.
To obtain training data for the model, the researchers first exposed bacteria grown in laboratory dishes to about 7,500 different compounds to see which could inhibit microbial growth. . They input the structure of each molecule into the model and told the model whether each structure could inhibit bacterial growth.
People walk on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (Photographer: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
After the model was trained, the model was used to analyze a set of 6,680 never-before-seen compounds, and the researchers narrowed down the 240 hits to test experimentally, as well as the existing We focused on compounds with different structures than antibiotics and molecules from training. data. That test found nine of his antibiotics, including a very strong one.
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The compound was originally studied as a potential antidiabetic drug, but turned out to be extremely effective at killing bacteria. However, it had no effect on other species of bacteria.
The university said it preferred a “narrow spectrum” killing ability to minimize the risk of bacteria rapidly spreading resistance to the drug. Additionally, the drug likely harms beneficial bacteria that live in the human gut and help control opportunistic infections.
The McMaster University booth at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. (RJ Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Scientists named the drug Abaucin and showed in mice that it could treat wound infections caused by bacteria. In clinical trials, it was also found to be effective against various drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii strains isolated from human patients. Additional experiments showed that the drug killed cells by interfering with a process known as lipoprotein transport. Cells use it to transport proteins from the cell interior to the cell envelope.
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The McMaster University lab now hopes to work with other researchers to optimize the compound’s efficacy and ultimately develop it for use in patients.
The authors of this study also plan to use modeling approaches to identify potential antibiotics against other types of drug-resistant infections.
The findings were published Thursday in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
