Canadian researchers using artificial intelligence found a promising antibiotic , which can effectively fight the extremely dangerous bacterium “Acinetobacter baumannii”. This bacterium causes wound infections, pneumonia, and is resistant to many existing drugs.

The problem with developing antibiotics is that bacteria are constantly mutating and adapting to drugs. But with the help of AI, scientists can quickly analyze chemical compounds and identify those that can effectively destroy the infection. This reduces the time needed to start clinical trials.

In the case of Acinetobacter baumannii, researchers at McMaster University in Ontario used AI to process a list of 6,680 compounds and in just an hour and a half, compiled a short list of potential drugs. It is not known how long it will take to conduct this kind of research manually, without the help of computers and artificial intelligence.

Scientists have discovered that a powerful antibiotic called Abaucin can be used to fight Acinetobacter baumannii. The peculiarity of this antibiotic is that it purposefully attacks only this particular bacterium, and not everything in a row, like most known drugs. This is good news because the so-called superbugs are becoming increasingly resistant to common antibiotics and need stronger agents to counteract them.

However, the creation of a drug based on Abaucin is still far away. Scientists have to do a lot of tests and experiments to make sure the drug is safe for humans. Dr. Jonathan Stokes of McMaster University expects such a drug to be available no earlier than 2030.

Thus, AI in medicine does not replace rigorous research, but only complements it, allowing doctors to focus on more important work. However, the use of artificial intelligence for the rapid selection of chemical compounds enormously saves time and resources for researchers, which contributes to the multiple acceleration of the drug development process.

At the beginning of May, we already reported on promising system based on artificial intelligence , allowing robots to conduct up to 10 thousand scientific experiments per day, even without human intervention. And the more often such news appears, the sooner humanity will come closer to creating superdrugs that can defeat even difficult-to-treat diseases.