Discovery and Understanding of Antimicrobial Peptides

Antimicrobial resistant infections (AMRI) are stressing healthcare. In US alone, 2M people / year are infected with resistant bacteria while at the same time there is a critical depletion of antibiotics in the pipeline. Without effective antibiotics, the success of major surgery and cancer chemotherapy would be compromised. The cost of health care for patients with AMRI is high due to longer duration of illness, additional tests and more expensive drugs. The World Health Organization has thus recognized that AMRI is an increasingly serious threat which requires action across all government sectors and society. Solutions will have high impact.

In response, IBM Research, NPL, STFC’s Hartree Center and Cambridge, have developed a discovery paradigm, which combines physical experiment, theory and simulation, standard and high accuracy QDO models with Big Data / machine learning techniques, high through-put coarse-grained modeling, metrology and synthesis, to discovery antimicrobial peptides with broad spectrum action. Our strategy is highly integrated, with each effort supporting the other (see above).