Human receives AI-designed virus for the first time
Not to kill the human, of course – to kill the antibiotic-resistant bacteria causing their infection
For the first time, a person has received a virus designed by artificial intelligence to target bacteria, according to researchers at Radical Numerics, an AI lab in San Francisco. The company claims this marks a significant milestone in translating AI-designed biology from laboratory testing to clinical administration. The cocktail of bacteriophages, which specifically infect bacteria, was administered to the patient under a compassionate-use arrangement and eliminated an antibiotic-resistant bacterial isolate in the lab.
The researchers used their AI model, Omnii-1, to design the phages, which were then tested against bacteria from the patient's infection. Although the patient's condition is not specified, the research highlights the potential of AI-designed phages as an alternative to antibiotics, which are becoming less effective due to antimicrobial resistance.
The treatment represents a major step forward in using AI to develop targeted therapies for individual bacterial infections, but the results from a single patient do not provide a definitive assessment of the therapy's safety and efficacy.
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