scholarly journals Artificial Intelligence and Antibiotic Discovery

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1376
Author(s):  
Liliana David ◽  
Anca Monica Brata ◽  
Cristina Mogosan ◽  
Cristina Pop ◽  
Zoltan Czako ◽  
...  

Over recent decades, a new antibiotic crisis has been unfolding due to a decreased research in this domain, a low return of investment for the companies that developed the drug, a lengthy and difficult research process, a low success rate for candidate molecules, an increased use of antibiotics in farms and an overall inappropriate use of antibiotics. This has led to a series of pathogens developing antibiotic resistance, which poses severe threats to public health systems while also driving up the costs of hospitalization and treatment. Moreover, without proper action and collaboration between academic and health institutions, a catastrophic trend might develop, with the possibility of returning to a pre-antibiotic era. Nevertheless, new emerging AI-based technologies have started to enter the field of antibiotic and drug development, offering a new perspective to an ever-growing problem. Cheaper and faster research can be achieved through algorithms that identify hit compounds, thereby further accelerating the development of new antibiotics, which represents a vital step in solving the current antibiotic crisis. The aim of this review is to provide an extended overview of the current artificial intelligence-based technologies that are used for antibiotic discovery, together with their technological and economic impact on the industrial sector.

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Olaolu Oloyede ◽  
Emma Cramp ◽  
Diane Ashiru-Oredope

Antimicrobial resistance continues to be a considerable threat to global public health due to the persistent inappropriate use of antibiotics. Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs are essential in reducing the growth and spread of antibiotic resistance, in an environment which lacks incentives for the development of new antibiotics. Over the years, a variety of resources have been developed to strengthen antimicrobial stewardship. However, the differences in resources available present a challenge for organisations/teams to establish the best resources to utilise for service provision. A peer review tool was formulated using four national documents on AMS and tested through three phases with feedback. A survey method was used to collect feedback on the validity, feasibility, and impact of the AMS peer review tool. Feedback received was positive from the earlier pilots. The tool was found to be useful at identifying areas of good practice and gaps in antimicrobial stewardship across various pilot sites. Feedback suggests the tool is useful for promoting improvements to AMS programs and highlights that the content and features of the tool are appropriate for evaluating stewardship.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
David Aufreiter ◽  
Doris Ehrlinger ◽  
Christian Stadlmann ◽  
Margarethe Uberwimmer ◽  
Anna Biedersberger ◽  
...  

On the servitization journey, manufacturing companies complement their offerings with new industrial and knowledge-based services, which causes challenges of uncertainty and risk. In addition to the required adjustment of internal factors, the international selling of services is a major challenge. This paper presents the initial results of an international research project aimed at assisting advanced manufacturers in making decisions about exporting their service offerings to foreign markets. In the frame of this project, a tool is developed to support managers in their service export decisions through the automated generation of market information based on Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. The paper presents a roadmap for progressing towards an Artificial Intelligence-based market information solution. It describes the research process steps of analyzing problem statements of relevant industry partners, selecting target countries and markets, defining parameters for the scope of the tool, classifying different service offerings and their components into categories and developing annotation scheme for generating reliable and focused training data for the Artificial Intelligence solution. This paper demonstrates good practices in essential steps and highlights common pitfalls to avoid for researcher and managers working on future research projects supported by Artificial Intelligence. In the end, the paper aims at contributing to support and motivate researcher and manager to discover AI application and research opportunities within the servitization field.


2021 ◽  
pp. 183933492110376
Author(s):  
Patrick van Esch ◽  
J. Stewart Black

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital marketing is revolutionizing the way organizations create content for campaigns, generate leads, reduce customer acquisition costs, manage customer experiences, market themselves to prospective employees, and convert their reachable consumer base via social media. Real-world examples of organizations who are using AI in digital marketing abound. For example, Red Balloon and Harley Davidson used AI to automate their digital advertising campaigns. However, we are early in the process of both the practical application of AI by firms broadly and by their marketing functions in particular. One could argue that we are even earlier in the research process of conceptualizing, theorizing, and researching the use and impact of AI. Importantly, as with most technologies of significant potential, the application of AI in marketing engenders not just practical considerations but ethical questions as well. The ability of AI to automate activities, that in the past people did, also raises the issue of whether marketing professionals will embrace AI as a means to free them from more mundane tasks to spend time on higher value activities, or will they view AI as a threat to their employment? Given the nascent nature of research on AI at this point, the full capabilities and limitations of AI in marketing are unknown. This special edition takes an important step in illuminating both what we know and what we yet need to research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Monserrat-Martinez ◽  
Yann Gambin ◽  
Emma Sierecki

Since their discovery in the early 20th century, antibiotics have been used as the primary weapon against bacterial infections. Due to their prophylactic effect, they are also used as part of the cocktail of drugs given to treat complex diseases such as cancer or during surgery, in order to prevent infection. This has resulted in a decrease of mortality from infectious diseases and an increase in life expectancy in the last 100 years. However, as a consequence of administering antibiotics broadly to the population and sometimes misusing them, antibiotic-resistant bacteria have appeared. The emergence of resistant strains is a global health threat to humanity. Highly-resistant bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus (methicillin-resistant) or Enterococcus faecium (vancomycin-resistant) have led to complications in intensive care units, increasing medical costs and putting patient lives at risk. The appearance of these resistant strains together with the difficulty in finding new antimicrobials has alarmed the scientific community. Most of the strategies currently employed to develop new antibiotics point towards novel approaches for drug design based on prodrugs or rational design of new molecules. However, targeting crucial bacterial processes by these means will keep creating evolutionary pressure towards drug resistance. In this review, we discuss antibiotic resistance and new options for antibiotic discovery, focusing in particular on new alternatives aiming to disarm the bacteria or empower the host to avoid disease onset.


Author(s):  
Xuefei (Nancy) Deng

Artificial Intelligence or AI is the theory and development of computer systems that can think and act humanly and rationally. AI is gradually transforming our work and life. Along with the increasing presence of robots in our lives arises the fear that AI may take away human jobs. Debates or worries notwithstanding, AI and robots are increasingly brought into the teams of human workers, but our understanding of this emerging human-robot teaming phenomenon remains limited. This chapter presents a brief overview of AI and discusses the relationship between AI and knowledge management. Moreover, it focuses on understanding key issues arising in the collaboration between human and intelligent agents (i.e. robots) in the team setting, and coping strategies and design considerations. This chapter also discusses the value sensitive design framework as a useful tool for incorporating the values of agent transparency and team trust into the design of human-robotic systems. The chapter concludes with the new perspective of augmented intelligence and promising avenues for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512093926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Assenmacher ◽  
Lena Clever ◽  
Lena Frischlich ◽  
Thorsten Quandt ◽  
Heike Trautmann ◽  
...  

Recently, social bots, (semi-) automatized accounts in social media, gained global attention in the context of public opinion manipulation. Dystopian scenarios like the malicious amplification of topics, the spreading of disinformation, and the manipulation of elections through “opinion machines” created headlines around the globe. As a consequence, much research effort has been put into the classification and detection of social bots. Yet, it is still unclear how easy an average online media user can purchase social bots, which platforms they target, where they originate from, and how sophisticated these bots are. This work provides a much needed new perspective on these questions. By providing insights into the markets of social bots in the clearnet and darknet as well as an exhaustive analysis of freely available software tools for automation during the last decade, we shed light on the availability and capabilities of automated profiles in social media platforms. Our results confirm the increasing importance of social bot technology but also uncover an as yet unknown discrepancy of theoretical and practically achieved artificial intelligence in social bots: while literature reports on a high degree of intelligence for chat bots and assumes the same for social bots, the observed degree of intelligence in social bot implementations is limited. In fact, the overwhelming majority of available services and software are of supportive nature and merely provide modules of automation instead of fully fledged “intelligent” social bots.


2014 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard D. Wright

Antibiotic discovery is in crisis. Despite a growing need for new drugs resulting from the increasing number of multi-antibiotic-resistant pathogens, there have been only a handful of new antibiotics approved for clinical use in the past 2 decades. Faced with scientific, economic, and regulatory challenges, the pharmaceutical sector seems unable to respond to what has been called an “apocalyptic” threat. Natural products produced by bacteria and fungi are genetically encoded products of natural selection that have been the mainstay sources of the antibiotics in current clinical use. The pharmaceutical industry has largely abandoned these compounds in favor of large libraries of synthetic molecules because of difficulties in identifying new natural product antibiotics scaffolds. Advances in next-generation genome sequencing, bioinformatics, and analytical chemistry are combining to overcome barriers to natural products. Coupled with new strategies in antibiotic discovery, including inhibition of resistance, novel drug combinations, and new targets, natural products are poised for a renaissance to address what is a pressing health care crisis.


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