Targeting dormant bacteria with the help of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence targets dormant bacteria.
Most antibiotics target metabolically active bacteria, but now, in a new breakthrough using artificial intelligence, researchers have managed to use drug combinations against dormant microbes.
According to IRNA, citing MIT, since the 1970s, the discovery of antibiotics has experienced a period of peace and tranquility. Now the World Health Organization has announced that the antimicrobial resistance crisis is one of the 10 public health threats in the world.
When an infection is repeatedly treated, there is a risk that the bacteria will become resistant to antibiotics. But why should an infection return after proper antibiotic treatment? A well-documented possibility is that the bacterium becomes metabolically inert and thus escapes detection by traditional antibiotics because these antibiotics respond only to metabolic activity. Once the danger has passed, those bacteria return to life and the infection emerges.
Narratives related to “dormant” bacterial resistance are not new news for the scientific community. Ancient bacterial species from 100 million years ago have been discovered alive in an energy-storing state on the Pacific Ocean floor in recent years.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Institute of Medical Engineering at MIT University recently made news for using artificial intelligence to discover a new class of antibiotics. This action is part of the group's larger mission to use artificial intelligence to expand the range of available antibiotics.
A 2019 study found that 1.27 million lives could have been saved that year if infections were vulnerable to drugs. One of the challenges of researchers in this field is to find antibiotics that are able to target metabolically dormant bacteria.
Researchers at the Collins lab used artificial intelligence to speed up the process of finding antibiotic properties, and what would have taken years was done in a week, and the researchers found a compound called semapimod.
This compound is an anti-inflammatory drug for the treatment of Crohn's disease (Crohn's disease, chronic inflammation of the lower part of the small intestine), and researchers discovered that this drug is also effective against two bacteria, Escherichia coli and Acinetobacter baumannii, in the stationary and dormant stages.
It was also found that this compound has the ability to cause membrane disruption in the so-called “gram negative” bacteria. This type of bacteria is known for its inherent resistance to antibiotics. By disrupting one of the components of the outer membrane, semapimod sensitizes gram-negative bacteria to drugs that are generally only active against gram-positive bacteria.
