Researchers have administered AI-designed, bacteria-targeting viruses to a person in what they claim is a first, but don’t press them for results: They’re not ready to say how it went quite yet. Radical Numerics, a San Francisco-based AI lab developing AI models for bioscience, announced the treatment this week, claiming it marks the first time a cocktail containing AI-designed bacteriophages has been administered to a human patient under a compassionate-use arrangement. These aren’t just any viruses, mind you: Omnii-1, the AI model publicly unveiled by Radical Numerics this week, was used to design viable bacteriophages, a type of virus that specifically infects bacteria. Therapeutic use of phages isn’t novel in and of itself, with the bacteria-targeting viruses being sought as an alternative to combat the rise of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that are increasingly rendering antibiotics ineffective . Phages have a number of potential advantages over antibiotics, most notably their ability to target specific bacterial strains – a big plus when it comes to sparing beneficial gut bacteria that can be affected by broad-spectrum antibiotics. AI has already shown promise in speeding up phage engineering, as we reported last year when a group of researchers from Stanford University and the Arc Institute created AI-designed phages that targeted E. coli bacteria. The phages, designed using the genetic sequence of a well-studied natural E. coli phage, included several variants that outperformed their biological predecessor in laboratory tests. Similar to the Stanford work, which is referenced in Radical Numerics’ write-up, the company used its own AI model to design bacteriophages, which it then tested against bacteria isolated from the antibiotic-resistant infection its patient was suffering from…
