A new artificial intelligence that can design antibiotics

Researchers from McMaster University in Canada and Stanford University in the US have developed a new generative artificial intelligence model that can design billions of new antibiotic molecules. These antibiotics are cheap and easy to make in the laboratory.

According to an article published in Nature, researchers have developed a new generative artificial intelligence model called “SyntheMol” that can design new antibiotics to fight bacteria. This artificial intelligence can be used to prevent the spread of Acinetobacter baumannii – one of the most dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.

Generative artificial intelligence for the production of new antibiotics

With the global spread of drug-resistant bacteria, there is an urgent need for new antibiotics; Even modern methods for creating new chemical compounds are limited or expensive. In general, antibiotics are considered to be an exclusive drug, meaning that as soon as an antibiotic is produced in the laboratory, bacteria quickly evolve to become resistant to it. For this reason, it is necessary to continuously produce new antibiotics with a fast and low-cost method. This is where artificial intelligence plays an important role. SyntheMol artificial intelligence can synthesize 132,000 molecular fragments of different natures through 13 chemical reactions. In other words, 30 billion different molecular compounds can be designed and produced with this artificial intelligence.

Researchers have used this artificial intelligence to make antibiotics for Acinetobacter baumannii. The SyntheMol model not only designs new molecules that can themselves lead to a promising drug, but also provides researchers with instructions on how to make each new compound. Such instructions help chemists to create AI-generated compounds.