September 11, 2024
Barry Bunin, PhD
Founder & CEO
Collaborative Drug Discovery
“How Machines Learned to Discover Drugs.” That’s the headline for a recent article in The New Yorker providing a historical look at how AI has emerged as a powerful tool in the search for new antibiotics. The article includes a look into the work of chemical biologist Sean Brady’s Drugs from Dirt lab at Rockefeller University and then explores how AI has evolved into a lab tool to help scientists slash the time it takes to identify promising candidates. Digging deeper beyond the famous “New Yorker” cartoons and the entertaining doctor’s explanation of drug discovery for the lay public, the Brady laboratory has been genetically modifying small molecules from bacteria for over a decade (see: https://bradylab.rockefeller.edu/research/). The article underscores the vast potential in the dirt beneath our feet, noting: “Many of the world’s leading drugs originated in the natural world. Ancient Egyptians soothed their wounds with aloe-vera gel; morphine and codeine came from the opium poppy; Ozempic was inspired by a peptide in lizard venom. Dirt is one of the richest sources of medicine, because its microbes have been waging a war with one another for millions of years. Vancomycin—essentially a biochemical weapon that one bacterium uses to kill others—was discovered in soil samples from India and Indonesia in 1953. Around the same time, researchers reported that a bacterium in ‘heavily manured’ New Jersey soil produced streptomycin, an antibiotic that became the first effective treatment for tuberculosis.”
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It Slices, It Dices, It Cuts Covid-19 Deaths. In the old days of network television, late-night advertisers were famous for products that could do everything, all-in-one. It is beginning to feel that way for real with Ozempic, Wegovy, and other GLP-1 receptor agonists. Originally semiglutides were used to treat diabetes, and then brought into weight-loss, and then linked to reductions in heart attacks and strokes and improvements in sleep apnea. Now there is a study finding that people taking the GLP-1 weight loss drugs were less likely to die from Covid-19. CNBC reports a study recently published by the Journal of the
American College of Cardiology (JACC) found that people who were already being treated with a 2.4 mg dose of the drug semaglutide — the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy — could still contract Covid-19 but had a 33% lower chance of dying from the sickness. Yale University School of Medicine Professor and JACC editor Harlan Krumholz said
in a JACC interview, “I begin to think about the weight loss almost as a side effect, I mean these [drugs] are really promoting health. … “I was thinking mostly about cardiometabolic health… but there may be many mechanisms by which [semaglutide] is making us healthier, and in some ways this is suggesting it’s helping us to resist the adverse consequences of the pandemic.” Krumholz noted that further research into the impacts of semaglutide was required.
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"Engineered Virus Steals Proteins From H.I.V., Pointing to New Therapy." That’s the headline from a recent article in The New York Times on a study published in Science about a potential new weapon against H.I.V. in the form of a molecular mimic that invades a cell and steals essential proteins from the virus. The study found that the mimic prevented H.I.V. from multiplying inside of monkeys. The new therapeutic approach will soon be tested in people, the scientists said. Dr. Leor Weinberger, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the new study, and his colleagues created what they now call therapeutic interfering particles, or TIPs, which have about half of the genetic material of normal H.I.V. As part of the study, the scientists infected monkeys with a primate version of H.I.V. that normally kills the animals in a matter of weeks. They then gave the animals a single injection of TIPs. As they predicted, the treatment drove down the level of the virus by a factor of 10,000. Almost all of the monkeys that received the TIPs survived, showing no sign of AIDS. “They looked healthy in any way we could check,” Dr. Weinberger said. The article notes that based on these promising results, Dr. Weinberger and his colleagues have been moving toward testing the experimental treatment in people. They have recruited volunteers infected with H.I.V. who are also terminally ill with cancer and other diseases. If the volunteers fare well, Dr. Weinberg’s team will expand the trial to H.I.V.-infected volunteers who are not terminally ill. They predict that TIPs will drive down their H.I.V. count, as it did in monkeys. Asher Leeks, a virologist at Yale University who was not involved in the research, said that it represented a big step forward in the study of so-called cheating viruses.”
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"CEO Steps Down from Troubled Ecstasy-Drug Company: Leadership Change Comes After Psychedelic Drugmaker Lykos Lost its Bid for FDA Approval." That’s the headline for an article in The Wall Street Journal about Lykos Therapeutics changing leadership in the aftermath of the FDA rejecting its application for psychotherapy with midomafetamine, also known as MDMA or Ecstasy. The therapy was intended to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, which afflicts about 13 million Americans. Veterans’ organizations have been vocal supporters of its availability. The article notes that Lykos had said that the FDA asked for another clinical study of its therapy and that it would work to resubmit its drug to the agency for approval. The article quotes Rick Doblin, a board member of Lykos and founder of the advocacy organization that created it, and who has spent roughly four decades advocating for psychedelics. Doblin said before the FDA’s decision that he would remain hopeful about MDMA’s future no matter which course the agency took. “Whatever FDA says, there will be a pathway towards approval,” Doblin said. “I don’t intend to stop working on this until FDA approval has been obtained.”
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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.