IBM’s artificial intelligence may help us defeat superbugs

We can now create new antibiotics faster than ever before.

This article is an installment of The Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here.

Look out, superbugs! We can now create new antibiotics faster than ever before — all thanks to a new AI tool from IBM.

Antibiotics transformed medicine — once fatal infections suddenly became treatable with the discovery of penicillin in the 20th century. However, like all living things, bacteria have proven to be pretty resilient: they’ll adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in. Our tendency to overprescribe antibiotics has led to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, aka “superbugs.”

The AI took less than two months to find 20 novel drug candidates.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to develop new drugs fast enough to keep pace in the arms race against these emerging superbugs.

And that’s a deadly problem.

If nothing is done to stop the threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, the World Health Organization estimates that we’ll see more than 10 million deaths a year by 2050. There’s also a huge economic cost associated with these illnesses.

Analysis Paralysis

Drug design usually involves a trial-and-error approach, but there are countless possible chemical combinations, so it’s a slow and tedious process. 

If nothing is done to stop the threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, we could see more than 10 million deaths a year by 2050.

That’s where IBM’s AI tool comes in. The AI records critical information about a large pool of different peptides (the building blocks of proteins). Using that data, it can create a brand new peptide design — for example, one with antimicrobial characteristics. 

Theoretically, the AI has now just reverse-engineered an effective drug candidate from a huge pool of options.

But drugs can’t just be effective — they’ve got to be safe in humans and, ideally, work against many different strains of bacteria. So next, the computer-generated molecules get sorted by the AI — ones that are deemed inefficient or unsafe get discarded. 

The Big Picture

With a traditional trial-and-error approach, it could take years to produce viable drug candidates.

But for IBM’s AI, it took less than two months.

The AI identified, created, and tested 20 novel drug candidates in just 48 days. Two of these drugs look really promising: they were both powerful against pathogens, not likely to cause further drug resistance in E. coli, and had low toxicity when tested both in vitro and in mice.

Two new antibiotic candidates are exciting — but the really valuable thing here is the AI that created them. Being able to rapidly discover effective, safe, and efficient drug candidates is a huge step toward defeating superbugs

This process could have implications beyond antibiotics, too — it could accelerate the design of any new therapy or chemical material, potentially unlocking new weapons against novel diseases (like COVID-19) and other currently untreatable conditions.

“(W)e hope that our AI could also be used to help address the world’s other most difficult discovery challenges,” the researchers write in a blog post, “such as designing new therapeutics, environmentally friendly and sustainable photoresists, new catalysts for more efficient carbon capture, and so much more.”

We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at [email protected].

Related
Pacemaker powered by light eliminates need for batteries and lets the heart to function more naturally
Scientists designed a pacemaker that transforms light into bioelectricity, or heart cell-generated electrical signals.
Generative AI tech is dreaming up new antibodies
A new tool for designing antibodies relies on the same kind of tech underpinning DALL-E and other image-generating AIs.
Pill to prevent Lyme disease kills ticks before they can infect you
A pill to prevent Lyme disease quickly killed ticks that bit treated volunteers, suggesting it could slow the spread of tick-borne diseases.
Drugs made in space “cooked real good,” says startup
Varda Space Industries has shared the results of its first mission to manufacture “space drugs” in Earth’s orbit.
Soaring insulin costs? Cows could help.
A genetically engineered cow that produce milk containing with human insulin could help cut the cost of the life-saving diabetes med.
Up Next
AI backpack
Subscribe to Freethink for more great stories