LIncreasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become a major public health problem. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), certain strains, such as E. coli or Klebsiella pneumoniae, is now resistant to most common treatments. Each year, these resistant infections cause more than one million direct deaths, and a total of nearly eight million deaths if related complications are taken into account.
To respond to this threat, the American team has explored an innovative solution: the creation of viruses, with AI, capable of specifically targeting bacteria, called bacteriophages, which do not attack humans but attack pathogens.
At Stanford University and the Arc Institute in California, researchers used the ΦX174 virus, a simple bacteriophage, as a model. By analyzing around two million similar virus genomes, they generated more than 300 new virus models with AI. Among them, sixteen have demonstrated the ability to replicate and destroy bacteria in the laboratory, as reported by MIT Technology Review.
A virus created specifically for phage therapy
Phage therapy, which consists of administering natural viruses to treat bacterial infections, could benefit from these advances. New variants generated using AI make it possible to target bacteria that are resistant to so-called “traditional” antibiotics, and could even be applied in agriculture to protect crops from certain bacterial diseases, as Tech & Co explains.
One of the main advantages of this process is precision: unlike antibiotics, these viruses only attack the target bacteria to avoid side effects. The experiments remain tightly controlled for now: no viruses have been developed that can infect humans.
Towards prediction of human disease
At the same time, other types of innovation with AI are developing in the field of preventive medicine. Delphi-2M, developed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Cambridge and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, can predict the risk of developing more than 1,200 conditions, from Alzheimer’s disease to heart attacks.
Progress but ethical questions remain unresolved
However, the increasing use of AI in healthcare raises ethical and regulatory issues, particularly around the collection of medical information. Asked about this subject by The main thing isNicolas Castoldi, deputy director general director of AP-HP, at that time emphasized the need to progressively test these systems before large-scale deployment, to guarantee their reliability and safety.
To find
Kangaroo today
Answer
The European AI Act and GDPR (general data protection regulation) provide a legal framework to combine innovation and personal data protection. These regulations aim to regulate the development and application of high-risk AI, while enabling players in Europe to remain competitive in the face of global innovation.
Artificial intelligence opens a new chapter to fight bacterial resistance and anticipate human diseases. Although technical and ethical challenges remain, these advances lay the foundation for medicine 2.0.
