Key points from article :
A major UK effort has been launched to fight drug-resistant infections by combining deep antibiotic expertise with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. The £45m project, led by Dr Andrew Edwards of Imperial College London, brings together the Fleming Initiative and GSK to accelerate the discovery of urgently needed antibiotics and antifungal treatments. The work focuses on superbugs—microbes that have evolved to survive existing drugs—now directly killing around a million people each year worldwide.
A key target is Gram-negative bacteria, including E. coli and Klebsiella, whose tough outer defences prevent most antibiotics from entering or staying inside the cell. Edwards’s team will test thousands of molecules with different chemical structures to map which ones can penetrate and persist within these pathogens. This new experimental data will train AI models to “learn” the chemical rules of entry and survival, effectively turning years of trial-and-error research into rapid computational predictions that guide scientists toward better drug designs.
The collaboration also aims to forecast how superbugs emerge and spread—much like a microbial weather report—and to pioneer AI-driven strategies against deadly fungal infections such as Aspergillus, which is particularly dangerous for people with weakened immune systems. Researchers hope that if AI can reveal a few strong new antibiotics, this could put medicine “back on the front foot,” slowing the march of resistance that Alexander Fleming warned about eight decades ago.
