From code to cure: Harnessing AI for antibiotic discovery and design.

AI-driven methods now facilitate the exploration of vast chemical and sequence spaces, enabling the design of synthesizable antibiotics with diverse mechanisms.

• Why it matters: Addressing the urgent need for new antibiotics is critical due to rising antimicrobial resistance, and current discovery pipelines are slow and limited.
• What they did: The authors review recent advances in AI for small-molecule and peptide antimicrobials, emphasizing data standards, translational pathways, and regulatory challenges.
• The result: These developments suggest AI can accelerate antibiotic discovery and design, potentially leading to more effective and diverse antimicrobial agents for clinical use.