2023-07-10-131427

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Denise Catacutan, graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Science at McMaster University and co-author of the paper. See SWNS story SWSCsuperbug. A drug that destroys one of the world’s deadliest bugs has been discovered – by a supercomputer. Artificial intelligence (AI) could hold the key to combating antimicrobial resistance – named among the biggest threats facing mankind. Acinetobacter baumannii is a hospital-acquired infection. It takes advantage of those with compromised immune systems. Premature babies are particularly vulnerable. Canadian and US scientists used state of the art ‘deep learning’ to identify the antibiotic that kills it. Named Aubacin, it was effective in experiments on mice with infected wounds and bacterial cells grown in the lab. The breakthrough was achieved using a neural network based on the human brain. It can access hundreds of millions – or even billions – of molecules with antibacterial properties. The technique opens the door to finding treatments for other potentially fatal diseases – including MRSA and C diff.