New Delhi, October 5 (IANS). A team of scientists at the Cleveland Clinic is using artificial intelligence (AI) to discover drugs to treat patients suffering from chronic pain.
The team, in collaboration with tech company IBM, used a deep learning framework to identify components of the gut microbiome and previously approved FDA drugs. These medications are drug-free and non-opioid, and can be repurposed to treat chronic pain.
Treating chronic pain with opioid drugs is still difficult because they carry serious side effects and the risk of addiction, said Yunguang Qiu, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cleveland Clinic.
This research was published in a magazine called Cell Press. In this, the team identified medicines for the treatment of pain by mapping intestinal metabolites.
With the help of AI, they decoded the compound and protein data to find out which compound can have the right effect on our pain receptors.
This process would have been very complex and time-consuming without AI.
They used their deep learning model LISA-CPI, which predicts how the compound and protein interact. Using the AI framework, some ingredients and drugs have been identified that can be repurposed to treat pain. These are now being tested in the lab.
The team said that using this algorithm to predict drug probabilities will help scientists create lists of drugs suitable for new trials, and reduce their efforts.
Apart from pain management, this technology can also be used in the discovery of drugs and elements to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s.
The team said that these basic models can be used to further improve AI techniques, which will enable the rapid development of medicines to treat many serious health problems.
–IANS
AS/
