An equally fundamental study published in Nature Communications gives us some seriously hopeful news. Scientists turned to AI to identify hundreds of new potential antibiotics derived from snake, scorpion and spider venom. Changge Guan, Ph.D., currently a postdoc in the De la Fuente Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, is driven by pioneering research. With his co-author Marcelo Torres, Ph.D., this study represents a significant advance in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The study used a revolutionary platform called Venomics artificial intelligence, which mapped more than 2,000 completely novel antibacterial motifs reconstructed. These motifs are short, linear, defined stretches of amino acids. From the perspective of therapeutics or agriculture, they have several advantages in that they can allow proteins or peptides to kill or inhibit bacterial growth. Most impressively, the algorithm flagged 386 compounds within just a couple of hours that show the molecular basis of next-generation antibiotics.
Exploring Venom’s Untapped Potential
The interdisciplinary research team then focused their efforts on the antimicrobial potential of venoms from around the world. These venoms, despite their evolutionary complexity, have been largely ignored for their potential medicinal properties. Torres pointed to the importance of computational approaches coupled with traditional lab experimentation in this pursuit.
“By pairing computational triage with traditional lab experimentation, we delivered one of the most comprehensive investigations of venom derived antibiotics to date.” – Marcelo Torres, Ph.D.
Antibiotic resistance continues to be one of the most serious threats to global health, causing over a million deaths per year. The identification of novel compounds with activity against drug-resistant pathogens would profoundly change treatment paradigms. In this study, researchers isolated 53 compounds that murdered some of the most infamous drug-resistant bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Extraordinarily, these compounds preserved safety for human erythrocytes.
A Revolutionary Approach with APEX
The researchers took advantage of the recently developed APEX system which allows for rapid scanning of large chemical spaces. That move allowed them to quickly zero in on promising peptides. As you might imagine, this system was key in speeding up the identification process.
“APEX lets us scan an immense chemical space in just hours and identify peptides with exceptional potential to fight the world’s most stubborn pathogens.” – César de la Fuente, Ph.D.
This technology is blazing quick and immensely productive. It would result in swifter creation of new antibiotics, something that’s become a critical necessity in today’s medical atmosphere. The research underscores the ways that cutting-edge computational methods can augment time-honored approaches in the search for new therapeutics.
Future Implications and Ongoing Research
This study demonstrated the unrealized potential of venom to be a driver in the development of new and novel antibiotics. It represents a new direction in how scientists are approaching the drug discovery process itself.
As for the evolutionary importance of venoms, César de la Fuente, Ph.D.
“Venoms are evolutionary masterpieces, yet their antimicrobial potential has barely been explored.” – César de la Fuente, Ph.D.
Scientists are doing a lot of hard work to search these compounds out. With their work, they aim to find new therapies for difficult infections that now evade traditional antibiotics.