Hundreds of potential antibiotics have been discovered in snake and spider venom thanks to AI.
A screening of global venom libraries, powered by artificial intelligence uncovered dozens of “promising” new drug candidates.
AI has already been used to complete screenings of plant compounds and existing drugs in search of potential new antibiotics, and snake, scorpion, and spider venoms have proven a fruitful hunting ground as well.
Antibiotic resistance contributes to more than one million deaths worldwide every year. Finding alternative compounds that can eliminate these pathogens is one of medicine’s great ongoing missions.
To that end, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States used a deep-learning system called APEX to sift through a database of more than 40 million venom encrypted peptides (VEPs), tiny proteins evolved by animals to ravage the nervous system, blood cells, and organs of their prey and/or attackers.
The algorithm flagged 386 compounds within a matter of hours with the molecular hallmarks of next-generation antibiotics.
“Venoms are evolutionary masterpieces, yet their antimicrobial potential has barely been explored,” said senior study author Professor César de la Fuente. “APEX lets us scan an immense chemical space in just hours and identify peptides with exceptional potential to fight the world’s most stubborn pathogens.”
From the AI-selected shortlist, the team synthesized 58 venom peptides for lab testing.
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The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed that 53 killed drug-resistant strains of bacteria, including E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus at doses that were harmless to human red blood cells.
“By pairing computational triage with traditional lab experimentation, we delivered one of the most comprehensive investigations of venom derived antibiotics to date,” said co-author Dr. Marcelo Torres in a release from his university.
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The platform mapped more than 2,000 entirely new antibacterial “motifs”—short, specific sequences of amino acids within a protein or peptide responsible for their ability to kill or inhibit bacterial growth.
The team is now taking the top peptide candidates, which could lead to new antibiotics, and improving them through medicinal-chemistry tweaks.
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