January 9, 2025
Barry Bunin, PhD
Founder & CEO
Collaborative Drug Discovery
“How Hallucinatory A.I. Helps Science Dream Up Big Breakthroughs.” That’s the headline for a New York Times article on how scientists are finding that AI hallucinations can be remarkably useful in “dreaming up riots of unrealities that help scientists track cancer, design drugs, invent medical devices, uncover weather phenomena and even win the Nobel Prize.” The
article quotes James J. Collins, an M.I.T. professor who recently praised hallucinations for speeding his research into novel antibiotics, as saying: “We’re exploring. We’re asking the models to come up with completely new molecules.” David Baker of the University of Washington shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering research on proteins. The Nobel committee praised him for discovering how to rapidly build completely new kinds of proteins not found in nature, calling his feat “almost impossible.” In an interview before the prize announcement, Dr. Baker cited bursts of A.I. imaginings as central to “making proteins from scratch.” The new technology, he added, has helped his lab obtain roughly 100 patents, many for medical care. One is for a new way to treat cancer. Another seeks to aid the global war on viral infections. Dr. Baker has also founded or helped start more than 20 biotech companies.
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NVIDIA: “Where is AI Winning in Drug Discovery? 4 Use Cases to Know.” That’s the headline from a recent sponsored article published in FIERCEPharma, in which the AI giant NVIDIA looks at how AI is proving its value in enhancing drug discovery workflows. “We have seen remarkable progress as far as AI’s impact on drug discovery, from target identification and drug design to preclinical safety and beyond—and this innovation has catalyzed and will continue to catalyze new therapeutic possibilities,” said Rory Kelleher, Global Head of Business Development, Healthcare and Life Sciences at NVIDIA. “In the future, I think what you’ll see is not necessarily a distinction between human-designed drugs or AI-designed drugs, but simply an era where intelligent technologies play an inherent, complementary role in drug discovery.” The four use cases NVIDIA spotlights are: 1) Target identification and mechanism-of-action (MOA) delivery; 2) Hit Identification; 3) Drug design and optimization; and 4) Preclinical safety. “What’s especially rewarding about working in this field is that we’re seeing the scientific benefits materialize right alongside operational ones,” Anthony Costa, PhD, Director of Digital Biology at NVIDIA said. “When you look at the speed that advanced computing is enabling across data analysis, experiment execution, trial simulation, and other activities in drug discovery, those dual strengths are absolutely helping innovate preclinical work at the same time they’re operationalizing it. And the world, inevitably, will benefit from that as these assets make
their way to the commercial market.”
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“'Achilles Heel' of Drug-Resistant Bacteria Has Been Found, Scientists Say.” That’s the headline from a ScienceAlert article, which represents some welcome news for what has long been a growing threat to public health—though the Achilles heel doesn’t apply to all antibiotic-resistant strains. “We discovered an Achilles heel of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," said molecular biologist Gürol Süel from the University of California, San Diego. "We can take advantage of this cost to suppress the establishment of antibiotic resistance without drugs or harmful chemicals.” The research focuses on depriving environments of magnesium to counter the bacteria's ability to thrive. Researchers say because unmutated strains don't share the same flaw, reducing the key nutrient shouldn't adversely impact bacteria needed for a healthy microbiome. The researchers published their findings as “Physiological Cost of Antibiotic Resistance: Insights from a Ribosome Variant in Bacteria” in 314w. Eun Chae Moon, a member of the research team, notes that not all mutated ribosome variants have this weakness, so the researchers are keen to explore similar mechanisms in other bacteria as well. Moon says: “We hope that our work can help identify conditions that hinder antibiotic-resistant strains without requiring development of new antibiotics.”
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“Scientists Have Discovered a “Mini-Brain” Inside the Heart.” That’s the headline for a SciTechDaily article on new research revealing that the heart has its own complex nervous system, or “mini-brain,” which plays a critical role in controlling its rhythm, independent of the brain. “This ‘little brain’ has a key role in maintaining and controlling the heartbeat, similar to how the brain regulates rhythmic functions such as locomotion and breathing,” explains Konstantinos Ampatzis, principal researcher and docent at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute Sweden, who led the study. The researchers identified several types of neurons in the heart that have different functions, including a small group of neurons with pacemaker properties. The finding challenges the current view on how the heartbeat is controlled, which may have clinical implications. “We will now continue to investigate how the heart’s brain interacts with the actual brain to regulate heart functions under different conditions such as exercise, stress, or disease,” says Ampatzis. “We aim to identify new therapeutic targets by examining how disruptions in the heart’s neuronal network contribute to different heart disorders.”
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Barry A. Bunin, PhD, is the Founder & CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery, which provides a modern approach to drug discovery research informatics trusted globally by thousands of leading researchers. The CDD Vault is a hosted biological and chemical database that securely manages your private and external data.