Scientists discover the first new antibiotics in over 60 years using AI

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is proving to be a game-changer when it comes to medicine with the technology now helping scientists to unlock the first new antibiotics in 60 years.

The discovery of a new compound that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium that kills thousands worldwide every year could prove to be a turning point in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

"The insight here was that we could see what was being learned by the models to make their predictions that certain molecules would make for good antibiotics," James Collins, professor of Medical Engineering and Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement.

"Our work provides a framework that is time-efficient, resource-efficient, and mechanistically insightful, from a chemical-structure standpoint, in ways that we haven’t had to date".

The results were published today in Nature and co-authored by a team of 21 researchers.

The team behind the project used a deep-learning model to predict the activity and toxicity of the new compound.

Deep learning involves the use of artificial neural networks to automatically learn and represent features from data without explicit programming.

It is increasingly being applied in drug discovery to accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates, predict their properties, and optimise the drug development process.

In this case, researchers focused on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Infections with MRSA can range from mild skin infections to more severe and potentially life-threatening conditions such as pneumonia and bloodstream infections.

Almost 150,000 MRSA infections occur every year in the European Union while almost