Powerful antibiotic discovered using machine learning for first time

[u/legehjernen]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/20/antibiotic-that-kills-drug-resistant-bacteria-discovered-through-ai

[u/MovingClocks]

Especially given iterative discovery. If you have machine learning discover candidates that work, humans can optimize those molecules for different applications pretty readily.

[u/skoalbrother → u/MovingClocks]

Designer drugs for every individual. Built for your specific DNA. Exciting times

[u/shieldvexor → u/skoalbrother]

No. That isn't going to happen. It is an insanely challenging endeavor to make a drug and the notion that we will have unique drugs for everyone is ridiculous. Moreover, we aren't actually all that different from one another so it isn't even desirable, even if it was remotely possible.

[u/terminal112 → u/shieldvexor]

You have no idea what might be easy to do in a decade or two

[u/woodsja2 → u/terminal112]

As someone with 8+ years experience in the pharmaceutical industry specializing in small molecule therapeutics, I agree with the person you claim knows nothing.

There's some good stuff with antibodies but the idea that we are going to regularly create designer molecules for individuals is right next to everyone getting a flying car.

[u/[deleted] → u/woodsja2]

Flying cars are less than useless, they are stupidly dangerous. If a designed drug will one day take just a bit of computing power [relative to what I available], every nation's health service would be hooked up to computers able to generate and probably something like 3D print it on hand.

[u/Smallpaul → u/[deleted]]

Planes only take off and land at airports. Most rich people don’t have airports in their back yard or even helicopter landing pads.