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THE Ministry of Health and Social Services announced funding for antibiotic research and development using generative AI.
Stop Emerging Threats (TARGET), through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), will use genAI to accelerate the discovery and development of new classes of antibiotics to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Bacterial infections are a leading cause of death worldwide and cost U.S. healthcare systems billions each year. There is an urgent need to develop new antibiotics as the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria increases, HHS said.
HHS said that conventional efforts to identify and develop new antibiotics require extensive manual screening and testing of molecular compounds, with the majority failing to successfully demonstrate antibiotic activity. The current process hinders the ability to discover new antibiotics at the speed needed to address the urgent threat of antimicrobial resistance.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
Generative AI will be used to expand the pool of candidate molecules. Deep learning will make it possible to identify biomolecules with antibiotic and pharmaceutical potential.
“The rise of antibiotic resistance threatens to turn once-treatable infections into life-threatening infections, but with AI, we can accelerate the discovery of new antibiotics to address this threat like never before,” said Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, director of ARPA-H.
TARGET will be led by Phare Bio, in collaboration with the Collins Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Wyss Institute at Harvard, with a budget of up to $27 million.
The research team will focus on using generative AI to increase the number of antibiotic candidates and on deep learning and novel screens to narrow the field of candidate molecules.
TARGET will validate each promising new discovery with the goal of identifying 15 promising leads for new antibiotics, which would help replenish the global pipeline, HHS said.
THE BIGGEST TREND
Every year, more than 35,000 people die from antimicrobial-resistant infections, including more than 2.8 million in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control and Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2019.
In 2019, the CDC Antimicrobial resistance is estimated to have cost the United States $20 billion in health care and $35 billion in lost productivity.
Many of the germs that cause these infections are commonly found in healthcare settings, leading to increased risks to patient safety and a burden on the healthcare system as these infections often require healthcare resources important to address, HHS said.
The CDC, in partnership with the University of Utah School of Medicine, estimated that treat six of the most alarming threats related to antimicrobial resistance contribute to more than $4.6 billion in healthcare costs annually.
This project comes a year after ARPA-H announced the Defeating Antibiotic Resistance through Transformative Solutions (DARTS) project, which aims to develop a set of diagnostic and experimental platforms that can reveal insights into how resistance antibiotics begins.
ON THE FILE
“Antibiotic resistance is a real and urgent threat affecting millions of people. We must prevent infections and conserve the antibiotics we have. We also urgently need new drugs to treat these increasingly resistant infections. This project will use AI to accelerate this needed innovation and help ensure we have the medicines we need to keep people alive,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org