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Scientists discover first new antibiotics in over 60 years using AI
(www.euronews.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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The article (and what I can access of the paper it is based on) doesn't really give any details as to what this class is, how it works etc. All the interesting parts about this aren't mentioned.
It sounds like they trained a classification model using 39,000 molecules with known reactivity to MRSA. The molecules are vectorized text representations of the structures. Once trained, they can run arbitrary molecules through the model and see which ones are predicted to have antibiotic properties, or at least MRSA reactivity.
They likely fed in molecules from families of structures that seem likely to contain an antibiotic but are too numerous to manually test them all. They get a prediction of which ones are likely to have the properties they want, and then start the slow process of creating and testing the molecules in the lab.
I get what they did (its been something a lot of groups have been wanting to do for years) but I am curious what molecule specifically they found that worked especially well. i.e What does this thing look like? What is the new antibiotic's mechanism of action? None of those latter details are discussed. Its something we can only guess at.
It sounds like they are moving forward with clinical testing in partnership with a bio company, so I'm sure they withheld the information anticipating a patent. The results of this paper was the validation of the explainable AI model which identified candidate classes of compounds.
Wow I love science. I love that someone owns the exclusive rights to sell new drugs at whatever price they want
This is why we need single payer healthcare. Let them charge whatever they want, but if there is only one buyer, that buyer can also pay whatever they want.
That's not science, that's capitalism. Don't forget that Dr. Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine, which is estimated to have a total value of over seven billion US dollars. Dr. Salk has always been a hero of mine.
Shit bag lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis later tried to see if they could patent it for themselves and luckily couldn't. That's capitalism for you. Fuck these guys.
capitalism, isn't the free market so hopeful for the masses?