Advanced Science<\/a>, reveal how computational strategies can identify drugs that could be repurposed to expand the arsenal available to combat antimicrobial resistance.<\/p>\nUsing these drugs, with known safety profiles for different purposes, saves both time and money while reducing risk involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis analysis demonstrates the potential of diverse AI models to rapidly screen chemical libraries to identify molecules with anti-bacterial properties,\u201d summarize Joshua Fitch, a PhD student at Imperial College London, and co-workers.<\/p>\n
Streptococcus pneumoniae has been identified by the World Health Organization as a one of 12 bacterial species that should be targeted for the development of antibiotics.<\/p>\n
The respiratory pathogen is a leading cause of common infections that drive antibiotic prescribing and is also responsible for more severe, life-threatening infections, including pneumonia and meningitis.<\/p>\n
Pneumococci have become resistant to antibiotics, both through the acquisition of resistance genes and the modification of core genes encoding antibiotic targets.<\/p>\n
Fitch and colleagues explored whether AI might help harness existing drugs as new weapons against this pathogen.<\/p>\n
Firstly, they created a dataset of compounds with known activity against\u00a0S. pneumoniae and compounds tested initially against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.<\/p>\n
They then used three AI models to prospectively evaluate 6747 small-molecule drugs for their potential to inhibit S. pneumoniae, choosing those with high consensus predictions as promising repurposing candidates.<\/p>\n
From the top predictions in antibiotic screening, the team selected 11 compounds for in vitro testing based on high model scores and dissimilarity in chemical structure to the training molecules.<\/p>\n
Nine of these compounds were able to inhibit growth of\u00a0S. pneumoniae\u00a0and one of the two most potent was even effective against drug-resistant strains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis study highlight show AI methods can be used not only for discovery of novel antimicrobial lead compounds, but also for short-term rational selection of treatments from existing drug repurposing libraries,\u201d the team concludes.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, AI-driven quantitative improvements in the effectiveness of systemic antibiotics, and use of narrow-spectrum topical antibiotics against common infections, have the potential to contribute to the challenge of [antimicrobial resistance], while such methods also enable the longer-term development of novel classes of antimicrobial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: KATERYNA KON\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY\/ Getty Images AI has revealed existing drugs that could be newly deployed against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8782,2864,363,134,6474,33555,111,2479,139,69,2478,296714,2477],"class_list":["post-601964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-antibiotic-resistance","tag-antibiotics","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-health","tag-infectious-diseases","tag-meningitis","tag-new-zealand","tag-news-features","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-precision-medicine","tag-streptococcus","tag-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Pneumococcal](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/StreptococcalPneumoniae-696x464.jpg\" "\\"1088371746\\"\/")
Credit: KATERYNA KON\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n