San Francisco AI lab Radical Numerics says phages designed by its Omnii-1 model were given to a patient with an antibiotic-resistant infection, which it calls the first clinical use of AI-designed phages.
Why it matters: Phages are viruses that infect bacteria, and finding ones that kill a specific patient's infection is slow. AI design could speed that up as drug-resistant infections grow.
What we know
- Omnii-1 is a genome language model. In tests on T7 phage variants with 11 to 15 amino acid changes, 69.9% of its designs produced working viruses, versus 4.8% of random controls, and 2,161 of 6,694 variants outperformed the natural phage, the company says.
- A cocktail containing Omnii-1-designed variants eliminated the patient's resistant bacteria in lab tests and was then given under a physician-led compassionate-use pathway, the company said.
- No patient outcomes have been disclosed, and a single patient cannot establish safety or efficacy, The Register notes.
- Drug-resistant infections are projected to cause about 40 million deaths from 2025 to 2050.