With the assistance of an AI-powered robot, a high-throughput screen identified triclosan, a plaque-fighting ingredient found in toothpaste, as an anti-malarial drug candidate that could be used against strains of malaria parasite that have grown resistant to currently used drugs. The discovery was made by researchers at the University of Cambridge and published today in Scientific Reports.
Eve, the artificially intelligent robot scientist, was developed by a team of scientists at the Universities of Manchester, Aberystwyth, and Cambridge to automate the drug discovery process by automatically developing and testing hypotheses to explain observations, run experiments using laboratory robotics, interpret the results to amend their hypotheses, and then repeat the cycle, automating high-throughput hypothesis-led research.
"Artificial intelligence and machine learning enables us to create automated scientists that do not just take a brute force approach, but rather take an intelligent approach to science. This could greatly speed up the drug discovery progress and potentially reap huge rewards," explains professor Ross King from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Manchester, who led the development of Eve.
Working with Eve and a novel automated yeast-based assay, the research team discovered that triclosan affects parasite growth by specifically inhibiting DHFR, an enzyme of the malaria parasite. DHFR is the target of a well-established antimalarial drug pyrimethamine; however, resistance to the drug among malaria parasites is common. The Cambridge team showed that triclosan was able to target and act on this enzyme even in pyrimethamine-resistant parasites.
"The discovery by our robot 'colleague' Eve that triclosan is effective against malaria targets offers hope that we may be able to use it to develop a new drug. We know it is a safe compound, and its ability to target two points in the malaria parasite's lifecycle means the parasite will find it difficult to evolve resistance," lead author Elizabeth Bilsland, now an assistant professor at the University of Campinas, Brazil, adds.
Image: This is Eve the robot scientist. Image courtesy of Ross King, University of Manchester.