The Daily Academic Desk brings together a weekly digest of Stanford University’s most influential and interesting research publications and developments. Read the latest from this week’s Research Roundup.
AI reveals new drugs to fight antibiotic resistance
Researchers at Stanford Medicine have built a generative artificial intelligence (AI) program to identify six new drugs to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The SyntheMol model generates chemical “recipes” and instructions for building drugs that can kill bacteria that have grown resistant to the effects of conventional antibiotics (commonly referred to as “superbugs”). As highlighted in a March 22 study published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, SyntheMol produced a drug that could kill Acinetobacter baumannii, the most common example of drug-resistant bacteria.
Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria are able to survive repeated doses of antibiotics and become resistant to the drug’s effects. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 5 million people around the world die from resistant bacteria each year.
“There is a great public health need to rapidly develop new antibiotics,” said co-lead author James Zou, associate professor of biomedical data science.
The authors say that the use of AI in chemistry and pharmaceuticals can significantly reduce the computational time required to create new drug compounds and optimize the effectiveness of those drugs.
Researchers have evaluated AI’s ability to explore molecules that do not exist in nature, which has led to creative and effective new compounds. They plan to partner with other research groups in the field to expand the applications of his SyntheMol, including heart disease treatment.
New ways to bring clean energy to low-income communities
A Stanford-led study published March 28 in Nature Energy found that installing solar panels on top of commercial and nonresidential buildings could provide reliable renewable energy to low-income communities across the United States. It has been shown that it may prove effective in providing
The paper’s authors, Stanford University engineers, explained how companies could accept government incentives to use buildings to harvest solar energy rather than residents. These companies provide the renewable energy they collect to the local power grid, allowing people in these areas to pay for the resource at a much lower cost than installing their own solar panels.
Low-income areas in the United States currently have much lower rates of solar panel installations than wealthier areas (although this gap is closing). The solutions proposed by the researchers could have a major impact on increasing domestic clean energy and slowing the effects of climate change through a broader transition to renewable energy sources.
“[The use of industrial spaces to host solar panels] It would also promote local clean, low-cost energy generation, increase resilience from power outages, and reduce pollution caused by fossil fuel power plants, many of which are located in low-income areas. ’22, co-author and fellow at the Human-Centered AI Institute (HAI), told Stanford News.
Reversing immune system aging in mice
Researchers at Stanford Medicine have successfully boosted the immune systems of aging mice’s ability to fight viruses in a recent pilot study. The paper, published March 27 in the journal Nature, suggests that age-reversing techniques could be applied to humans.
The authors treated selected mice in the study with an antibody that eliminates old immune cells. These mice were significantly younger and exhibited stronger immune systems compared to untreated mice. Additionally, the antibodies reduced the amount of inflammation and associated symptoms when the immune system needs to fight the virus.
“We were surprised that one treatment had such a long-lasting effect. The difference between treated and untreated animals remained dramatic even after two months. ” said lead author Jason Ross ’06, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.
According to the study authors, the findings point the way toward the introduction of related technologies to improve older adults’ resistance to viruses and infectious diseases.
