India, Aug. 18 -- Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have achieved a breakthrough in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, using artificial intelligence (AI) to design completely new antibiotics from scratch-molecules that have never before existed in nature or laboratories.

The AI-designed drugs successfully treated some infections in laboratory animals, including strains of bacteria that resist all current antibiotics, according to research published on Wednesday in the journal Cell. The work represents the first time that artificial intelligence has been used to create entirely novel antibiotic compounds rather than modify existing ones.

Antibiotic resistance has emerged as one of the most pressing glo...