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Biotech
AI in biology: drug discovery, genomics, dual-use and biosecurity risk — the biotech front of AI ethics, tracked daily.
Challenges and applications of artificial intelligence in infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed infectious disease control, enhancing rapid diagnosis and antibiotic discovery. While conventional tests delay diagnosis, AI-driven methods like machine learning and deep learning assist in pathogen detection, resistance prediction, and drug discovery. These tools improve antibiotic stewardship and identify effective compounds such as antimicrobial peptides and small molecules. This review explores AI applications in diagnostics, therapy, and drug dis
Prediction of checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy efficacy for cancer using routine blood tests and clinical data
Predicting whether a patient with cancer will benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) without resorting to advanced genomic or immunologic assays is an important clinical need. To address this, we developed and evaluated SCORPIO, a machine learning system that utilizes routine blood tests (complete blood count and comprehensive metabolic profile) alongside clinical characteristics from 9,745 ICI-treated patients across 21 cancer types. SCORPIO was trained on data from 1,628 patients acr
Genomic language models: opportunities and challenges
Harnessing the AI/ML in Drug and Biological Products Discovery and Development: The Regulatory Perspective
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the disruptive potential to transform patients' lives via innovations in pharmaceutical sciences, drug development, clinical trials, and manufacturing. However, it presents significant challenges, ethical concerns, and risks across sectors and societies. AI's rapid advancement has revealed regulatory gaps as existing public policies struggle to keep pace with the challenges posed by these emerging technologies. The term AI itself has become commonplace to argue t
The role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in predicting and combating antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major threat to global public health. The current review synthesizes to address the possible role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in mitigating AMR. Supervised learning, unsupervised learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and natural language processing are some of the main tools used in this domain. AI/ML models can use various data sources, such as clinical information, genomic sequences, microbiome insights, and epidemiolog
Revolutionizing Personalized Medicine: Synergy with Multi-Omics Data Generation, Main Hurdles, and Future Perspectives
The field of personalized medicine is undergoing a transformative shift through the integration of multi-omics data, which mainly encompasses genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. This synergy allows for a comprehensive understanding of individual health by analyzing genetic, molecular, and biochemical profiles. The generation and integration of multi-omics data enable more precise and tailored therapeutic strategies, improving the efficacy of treatments and reducing adverse e
Artificial intelligence alphafold model for molecular biology and drug discovery: a machine-learning-driven informatics investigation
AlphaFold model has reshaped biological research. However, vast unstructured data in the entire AlphaFold field requires further analysis to fully understand the current research landscape and guide future exploration. Thus, this scientometric analysis aimed to identify critical research clusters, track emerging trends, and highlight underexplored areas in this field by utilizing machine-learning-driven informatics methods. Quantitative statistical analysis reveals that the AlphaFold field is en
JCVI: A versatile toolkit for comparative genomics analysis
The life cycle of genome builds spans interlocking pillars of assembly, annotation, and comparative genomics to drive biological insights. While tools exist to address each pillar separately, there is a growing need for tools to integrate different pillars of a genome project holistically. For example, comparative approaches can provide quality control of assembly or annotation; genome assembly, in turn, can help to identify artifacts that may complicate the interpretation of genome comparisons.
Deep-learning-enabled antibiotic discovery through molecular de-extinction
Molecular de-extinction aims at resurrecting molecules to solve antibiotic resistance and other present-day biological and biomedical problems. Here we show that deep learning can be used to mine the proteomes of all available extinct organisms for the discovery of antibiotic peptides. We trained ensembles of deep-learning models consisting of a peptide-sequence encoder coupled with neural networks for the prediction of antimicrobial activity and used it to mine 10,311,899 peptides. The models p
Curbing the major and growing threats from invasive alien species is urgent and achievable
Although invasive alien species have long been recognized as a major threat to nature and people, until now there has been no comprehensive global review of the status, trends, drivers, impacts, management and governance challenges of biological invasions. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and Their Control (hereafter ‘IPBES invasive alien species assessment’) drew on more than 13,000
Integrating Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery in the Context of Revolutionizing Drug Delivery
Drug development is expensive, time-consuming, and has a high failure rate. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative tool in drug discovery, offering innovative solutions to complex challenges in the pharmaceutical industry. This manuscript covers the multifaceted role of AI in drug discovery, encompassing AI-assisted drug delivery design, the discovery of new drugs, and the development of novel AI techniques. We explore various AI methodologies, including ma
ProGen2: Exploring the boundaries of protein language models
The Role of AI in Drug Discovery: Challenges, Opportunities, and Strategies
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the drug discovery process, offering improved efficiency, accuracy, and speed. However, the successful application of AI is dependent on the availability of high-quality data, the addressing of ethical concerns, and the recognition of the limitations of AI-based approaches. In this article, the benefits, challenges, and drawbacks of AI in this field are reviewed, and possible strategies and approaches for overcoming the present obst
A Review of the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have transformed healthcare. This study is based on a general literature review uncovering the role of AI in healthcare and focuses on the following key aspects: (i) medical imaging and diagnostics, (ii) virtual patient care, (iii) medical research and drug discovery, (iv) patient engagement and compliance, (v) rehabilitation, and (vi) other administrative applications. The impact of AI is observed in detecting clinical conditions in medical imaging and
Towards Expert-Level Medical Question Answering with Large Language Models
Recent artificial intelligence (AI) systems have reached milestones in "grand challenges" ranging from Go to protein-folding. The capability to retrieve medical knowledge, reason over it, and answer medical questions comparably to physicians has long been viewed as one such grand challenge. Large language models (LLMs) have catalyzed significant progress in medical question answering; Med-PaLM was the first model to exceed a "passing" score in US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) style quest
Deep generative molecular design reshapes drug discovery
Recent advances and accomplishments of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep generative models have established their usefulness in medicinal applications, especially in drug discovery and development. To correctly apply AI, the developer and user face questions such as which protocols to consider, which factors to scrutinize, and how the deep generative models can integrate the relevant disciplines. This review summarizes classical and newly developed AI approaches, providing an updated and acc
Recent progress on vascular endothelial growth factor receptor inhibitors with dual targeting capabilities for tumor therapy
Vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs) are a family of receptor protein tyrosine kinases that play an important role in the regulation of tumor-induced angiogenesis. Currently, VEGFR inhibitors have been widely used in the treatment of various tumors. However, current VEGFR inhibitors are limited to a certain extent due to limited clinical efficacy and potential toxicity, which hinder their clinical application. Thus, the development of new strategies to improve the clinical outco
Effect of Artificial Intelligence Tutoring vs Expert Instruction on Learning Simulated Surgical Skills Among Medical Students
Importance: To better understand the emerging role of artificial intelligence (AI) in surgical training, efficacy of AI tutoring systems, such as the Virtual Operative Assistant (VOA), must be tested and compared with conventional approaches. Objective: To determine how VOA and remote expert instruction compare in learners' skill acquisition, affective, and cognitive outcomes during surgical simulation training. Design, Setting, and Participants: This instructor-blinded randomized clinical trial
AI bias: exploring discriminatory algorithmic decision-making models and the application of possible machine-centric solutions adapted from the pharmaceutical industry
A multi-omics approach unravels metagenomic and metabolic alterations of a probiotic and synbiotic additive in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)
BACKGROUND: Animal protein production is increasingly looking towards microbiome-associated services such as the design of new and better probiotic solutions to further improve gut health and production sustainability. Here, we investigate the functional effects of bacteria-based pro- and synbiotic feed additives on microbiome-associated functions in relation to growth performance in the commercially important rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). We combine complementary insights from multiple o
Amelioration of Alzheimer’s disease pathology by mitophagy inducers identified via machine learning and a cross-species workflow
A reduced removal of dysfunctional mitochondria is common to aging and age-related neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Strategies for treating such impaired mitophagy would benefit from the identification of mitophagy modulators. Here we report the combined use of unsupervised machine learning (involving vector representations of molecular structures, pharmacophore fingerprinting and conformer fingerprinting) and a cross-species approach for the screening and experime
Clinical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in cancer diagnosis: looking into the future
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the use of mathematical algorithms to mimic human cognitive abilities and to address difficult healthcare challenges including complex biological abnormalities like cancer. The exponential growth of AI in the last decade is evidenced to be the potential platform for optimal decision-making by super-intelligence, where the human mind is limited to process huge data in a narrow time range. Cancer is a complex and multifaced disorder with thousands of genetic and epi
Reporting guidelines for clinical trial reports for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the CONSORT-AI Extension
The CONSORT 2010 (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement provides minimum guidelines for reporting randomised trials. Its widespread use has been instrumental in ensuring transparency when evaluating new interventions. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence (AI) need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluation to demonstrate impact on health outcomes.The CONSORT-AI extension is a new reporting guideline for clinical
Reporting guidelines for clinical trial reports for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the CONSORT-AI extension
The CONSORT 2010 statement provides minimum guidelines for reporting randomised trials. Its widespread use has been instrumental in ensuring transparency in the evaluation of new interventions. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence (AI) need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluation to demonstrate impact on health outcomes. The CONSORT-AI (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials-Artificial Intelligence) extension is a new re
Guidelines for clinical trial protocols for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the SPIRIT-AI extension
The SPIRIT 2013 statement aims to improve the completeness of clinical trial protocol reporting by providing evidence-based recommendations for the minimum set of items to be addressed. This guidance has been instrumental in promoting transparent evaluation of new interventions. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence (AI) need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluation to demonstrate their impact on health outcomes. The SPIRIT-AI
Guidelines for clinical trial protocols for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the SPIRIT-AI Extension
The SPIRIT 2013 (The Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials) statement aims to improve the completeness of clinical trial protocol reporting, by providing evidence-based recommendations for the minimum set of items to be addressed. This guidance has been instrumental in promoting transparent evaluation of new interventions. More recently, there is a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluatio
Reporting guidelines for clinical trial reports for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the CONSORT-AI extension
The CONSORT 2010 statement provides minimum guidelines for reporting randomized trials. Its widespread use has been instrumental in ensuring transparency in the evaluation of new interventions. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence (AI) need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluation to demonstrate impact on health outcomes. The CONSORT-AI (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials-Artificial Intelligence) extension is a new re
Guidelines for clinical trial protocols for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the SPIRIT-AI extension
The SPIRIT 2013 statement aims to improve the completeness of clinical trial protocol reporting by providing evidence-based recommendations for the minimum set of items to be addressed. This guidance has been instrumental in promoting transparent evaluation of new interventions. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that interventions involving artificial intelligence (AI) need to undergo rigorous, prospective evaluation to demonstrate their impact on health outcomes. The SPIRIT-AI
Microbiome Engineering: Synthetic Biology of Plant-Associated Microbiomes in Sustainable Agriculture
To support an ever-increasing population, modern agriculture faces numerous challenges that pose major threats to global food and energy security. Plant-associated microbes, with their many plant growth-promoting (PGP) traits, have enormous potential in helping to solve these challenges. However, the results of their use in agriculture have been variable, probably because of poor colonization. Phytomicrobiome engineering is an emerging field of synthetic biology that may offer ways to alleviate
Digitizing clinical trials
Clinical trials are a fundamental tool used to evaluate the efficacy and safety of new drugs and medical devices and other health system interventions. The traditional clinical trials system acts as a quality funnel for the development and implementation of new drugs, devices and health system interventions. The concept of a "digital clinical trial" involves leveraging digital technology to improve participant access, engagement, trial-related measurements, and/or interventions, enable concealed
Structure-Based Virtual Screening: From Classical to Artificial Intelligence
The drug development process is a major challenge in the pharmaceutical industry since it takes a substantial amount of time and money to move through all the phases of developing of a new drug. One extensively used method to minimize the cost and time for the drug development process is computer-aided drug design (CADD). CADD allows better focusing on experiments, which can reduce the time and cost involved in researching new drugs. In this context, structure-based virtual screening (SBVS) is r
Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways?
Agriculture 4.0 is comprised of different already operational or developing technologies such as robotics, nanotechnology, synthetic protein, cellular agriculture, gene editing technology, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and machine learning, which may have pervasive effects on future agriculture and food systems and major transformative potential. These technologies underpin concepts such as vertical farming and food systems, digital agriculture, bioeconomy, circular agricult
Review: Recent advances in bovine in vitro embryo production: reproductive biotechnology history and methods
In vitro production (IVP) of embryos and associated technologies in cattle have shown significant progress in recent years, in part driven by a better understanding of the full potential of these tools by end users. The combination of IVP with sexed semen (SS) and genomic selection (GS) is being successfully and widely used in North America, South America and Europe. The main advantages offered by these technologies include a higher number of embryos and pregnancies per unit of time, and a wider
Artificial intelligence in clinical and genomic diagnostics
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Advances in AI software and hardware, especially deep learning algorithms and the graphics processing units (GPUs) that power their training, have led to a recent and rapidly increasing interest in medical AI applications. In clinical diagnostics, AI-based computer vision approaches are poised to revolutionize image-based diagnostics, while other AI subtype
Optimizing the use of biologgers for movement ecology research
The paradigm-changing opportunities of biologging sensors for ecological research, especially movement ecology, are vast, but the crucial questions of how best to match the most appropriate sensors and sensor combinations to specific biological questions and how to analyse complex biologging data, are mostly ignored. Here, we fill this gap by reviewing how to optimize the use of biologging techniques to answer questions in movement ecology and synthesize this into an Integrated Biologging Framew
FDA-ARGOS is a database with public quality-controlled reference genomes for diagnostic use and regulatory science
FDA proactively invests in tools to support innovation of emerging technologies, such as infectious disease next generation sequencing (ID-NGS). Here, we introduce FDA-ARGOS quality-controlled reference genomes as a public database for diagnostic purposes and demonstrate its utility on the example of two use cases. We provide quality control metrics for the FDA-ARGOS genomic database resource and outline the need for genome quality gap filling in the public domain. In the first use case, we show
Comparison and development of machine learning tools in the prediction of chronic kidney disease progression
BACKGROUND: Urinary protein quantification is critical for assessing the severity of chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the current procedure for determining the severity of CKD is completed through evaluating 24-h urinary protein, which is inconvenient during follow-up. OBJECTIVE: To quickly predict the severity of CKD using more easily available demographic and blood biochemical features during follow-up, we developed and compared several predictive models using statistical, machine learni
Are innovation and new technologies in precision medicine paving a new era in patients centric care?
Healthcare is undergoing a transformation, and it is imperative to leverage new technologies to generate new data and support the advent of precision medicine (PM). Recent scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements have improved our understanding of disease pathogenesis and changed the way we diagnose and treat disease leading to more precise, predictable and powerful health care that is customized for the individual patient. Genetic, genomics, and epigenetic alterations appear to b
Explaining the unique nature of individual gait patterns with deep learning
Machine learning (ML) techniques such as (deep) artificial neural networks (DNN) are solving very successfully a plethora of tasks and provide new predictive models for complex physical, chemical, biological and social systems. However, in most cases this comes with the disadvantage of acting as a black box, rarely providing information about what made them arrive at a particular prediction. This black box aspect of ML techniques can be problematic especially in medical diagnoses, so far hamperi
The Multidisciplinary Approach to Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia. A Narrative Review of Non-Pharmacological Treatment
Background. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia are chronic diseases with progressive deterioration of cognition, function and behavior leading to severe disability and death. The prevalence of AD and dementia is constantly increasing because of the progressive aging of the population. These conditions represent a considerable challenge to patients, their family and caregivers, and the health system, because of the considerable need for resources allocation. There is no disease modifying inter