Two Chinese scientific achievements, AI new antibiotics and Covid’s boost to immune research, are among the top ten science stories of 2022, according to a report.
Two Chinese scientific achievements, AI new antibiotics and Covid’s boost to immune research, are among the top ten science stories of 2022, according to a report.
Antimicrobial resistance is a serious global problem. According to the global research on antimicrobial resistance report published this year in the Lancet, drug-resistant bacteria were responsible for 4.95 million deaths worldwide in 2019, making untreatable infections one of the leading causes of death.
Developing new drugs to combat resistance and replenish our arsenal of effective antimicrobials is a never-ending battle. And this is where AI is beginning to make a significant contribution.
Even more striking, nearly half of the peptides discovered were completely novel, with no obvious sequence similarity to known antimicrobials, increasing the chances of circumventing existing resistance mechanisms.
Animal studies revealed that three of the new peptides could be used to treat bacterial pneumonia in mice in a safe and effective manner. Such studies are encouraging, promising an unprecedented rapid path to novel treatment options for some of the most frightening pathogenic threats we currently face.
Eriko Takano, professor of synthetic biology at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, praised Chinese scientist Ma Yue and his colleagues’ efforts in using AI to overcome resistance and replenish the arsenal of effective antimicrobials while developing new drugs in the AI new antibiotics category.
Ma Yue and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified antimicrobial peptides encoded by microbe genome sequences in the human gut using machine-learning techniques originally developed for natural language processing.
The algorithm discovered 2,349 antimicrobial peptide sequences. Among them, 216 peptides were chemically synthesised, and 181 were found to have antimicrobial activity.
AI has transformed the field of molecular biology over the last few years. The AlphaFold algorithm, which rapidly predicts the complex three-dimensional structures of proteins, kicked off the revolution, aiding in the understanding of protein functions and the identification of drug targets.
According to Takano, this is an impressive success rate that would not have been possible without the assistance of AI.
Another breakthrough of this year made by Sheena Cruickshank, professor of biomedical sciences and public engagement at the University of Manchester on Sunday. Prof. introduced the use of sniff able or inhale-able vaccines – mucosal vaccines, which are already used in China to combat COVID 19.
Cruickshank believes that inhalable vaccines, which are much more appealing to needle-phobic people, may provide long-term protection against respiratory viruses. According to Cruickshank, if these new developments live up to their promises, annual vaccinations may soon become obsolete.
A group of scientists chose the year’s significant scientific developments in no particular order, ranging from moon missions to fast-charging batteries and AI-sourced antibiotics.