It is an accepted fact in the medical field that bacterias may get used to an antibiotic treatment and therefore, a bacterial infection may keep on recurring after the dosage cycle of medicines.

One of the challenges of the researchers has been to tackle the dormant “sleeper-like” bacteria which evades anti-bacterial treatment, only to become active once the medicine is taken off.

But a new research augmented by Artificial Intelligence led by MIT’s Professors may have speed up the process of finding effective antibiotic properties in known drug compounds.

As per a reputed source, nearly 1.9 million people lost their lives as the infection became less susceptible to the anti-biotic treatment.

“Resistance is happening more over time, and recurring infections are due to this dormancy,” says Jackie Valeri, former MIT-Takeda Fellow who is now a PhD in biological engineering.

As per WHO, resistance posed by dormant bacteria to the known drug compounds is one of the top 10 public health threats.

But that scenario may change after the recent discovery where AI helped in finding a new drug that specifically targets the notorious dormant bacteria.

AI could Speed up the process of finding Effective Compounds

In the research done by MIT Professors, AI was deployed to search for antibiotic properties in known drug compounds. If done through the conventional route, the process could have taken millions of years. But the AI was able to do the the high-throughput screening over the weekend and found a compound called semapimod which could effectively combat the dormat bacteria that evades the anti-bacterial treatment.