Outsmarting the Superbugs with Artificial Intelligence

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the top health concerns, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is estimated that antimicrobial resistance could cause as many as 10 million deaths per year by 2050. In this episode, we discuss the power of machine learning against drug-resistant infections with Dr. James Collins from MIT and Harvard, and one of the pioneers in synthetic biology. His team discovered a powerful antibiotic molecule by harnessing artificial intelligence to select potential candidates from a chemical library with more than 100 million molecules, and successfully expanded the antibiotic arsenal against a critical pathogen classified by the WHO.