Promising new broad spectrum antibiotic compound identified by algorithm
Elisabeth Mahase · BMJ · 2020
A new broad spectrum antibiotic compound, which appears to be effective against dozens of bacterial strains and has a different chemical structure to existing antibiotics, has been identified by researchers at MIT. The team used a machine learning algorithm to assess thousands of compounds and identify potential antibiotic candidates. It selected a molecule which was previously investigated as a potential diabetes drug and has now been named halicin after the fictional artificial intelligence system …