AI is engineering antimicrobial viruses

All God’s critters got viruses. Not just animals and plants, but fungi and bacteria. The viruses that infect and kill bacteria are called bacteriophages (or phages, for short). 

For decades, the USSR developed and used natural bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections like cholera. Even after the discovery of antibiotics, the Soviet Union continued the clinical use of bacteriophages.

Now, a US company has used AI to engineer a bacteriophage to treat infections:

“Rather than searching for a virus that could kill the patient's bacteria, Omnii-1 redesigned part of a virus so it could better recognize and attack the specific bacterial strain causing the infection. The company says the AI-driven process could eventually take just days.”

An increasing number of bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to common antibiotics, and in some cases, to all available antibiotics. So, bacteriophage therapy represents a potential new tool in the bacterial arms race. How effective is it?

“However, it has not released details about the patient's diagnosis, the treatment's outcome, or whether the infection was ultimately cleared.”

M’kay, so it’s too soon to say whether this will actually work. At least AI may shorten the timeline to perfecting this technology.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ai-human-inject-virus-b3075967.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawVRs2FleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMXNwdU1FZVgwdEpwSnMybUlzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEfzw1x3V2AWzeYbrxqV5UxCWM6965cLkfPiJ8FfUQqBzZyojHSL-e5ghsX8q8_aem__qW_2IS0IrrchahPSgl3pA

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