Acinetobacter baumannii<\/em>] is public enemy No. 1 for antibiotic resistance,\u201d which he went on to say was largely due to it being often found in hospital settings, its ability to survive on surfaces for prolonged periods of time and the ability of the bacterial pathogen to pick up DNA from other species of bacteria in its environment, which can encode antibiotic-resistance genes. A. baumannii causes pneumonia, meningitis and infects wounds, all of which can lead to death if not properly treated.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAI Is The New Powertool in the Medical Research Toolbox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The researchers tested roughly 7,500 molecules with different structures in a lab to see which of them were able to demonstrate growth inhibiting properties of A. baumannii and which of them were not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, the research team trained an AI model to understand what chemical features resulted in molecules that demonstrated those properties. Once the model was trained, they were able to show the AI model new molecules it had never seen and based on what it had learned from its training datasets, it was able to predict which chemicals would most likely be effective against the drug-resistant pathogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once the most likely molecular candidates were identified by the AI model, the researchers then tested those molecules to see how well they could fight off A. baumannii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The AI did not discover the new treatment for the highly drug-resistant bacteria, but it sped up the process to find it exponentially. Instead of having to test thousands or even tens of thousands of molecules, only a few hundred were tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe ended up finding this one molecule that was potent at inhibiting the growth of Acinetobacter in the laboratory \u2014 and it was structurally unique relative to every other known antibiotic we have. So, this AI model helped us rather efficiently pull out an interesting molecule with antibacterial properties against the bug we were trying to kill,\u201d said Stokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He further commented that their research offers proof that the application of AI methods can \u201cmeaningfully influence\u201d the discovery of new antibiotics for other challenging bacterial pathogens. \u201cI’m not saying that AI is a panacea \u2014 it’s not going to solve all of our problems for us \u2014 but it’s a very powerful tool in our toolbox with which we use to find new medicines for people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team hopes to employ AI, using the same process to discover treatments for other, drug-resistant bacteria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the last several decades, doctors and scientists have warned that we will get to the point where antibiotics will no longer work to treat serious infections. That time has come. Independent medical journal, The Lancet, published a report in January 2022 saying that more than one million people worldwide, died of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[9],"authors":[{"term_id":9,"user_id":2,"is_guest":0,"slug":"danielle","display_name":"Danielle Sastrawan","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1e6b5a1f00dc39c4442e7dfe36706d35?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Sastrawan","first_name":"Danielle","user_url_2":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiforfolks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}