New antibiotic targets IBD — and AI predicted how it would work before scientists could prove it - Faculty of Health Sciences
Key Takeaways
- Researchers discovered a new narrow-spectrum antibiotic, enterololin, specifically targeting inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).
- The team successfully used a new type of AI to predict the drug's exact mechanism of action (MOA), a global first for AI in this application.
- Enterololin spares the gut microbiome by only attacking specific disease-causing bacteria like E. coli, unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics.
- The AI reduced the MOA study time from potentially two years to six months and significantly cut associated costs.
- The drug targets the essential bacterial protein complex called LolCDE, offering a promising new treatment for millions suffering from IBD.
Researchers at McMaster University and MIT have achieved a dual scientific breakthrough by discovering a new antibiotic, enterololin, specifically designed to treat inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) like Crohn’s disease. Concurrently, they utilized a novel AI application to predict the drug's mechanism of action (MOA), a feat claimed to be a global first for AI in this context, detailed in Nature Microbiology on October 3, 2025. Enterololin is a narrow-spectrum antibiotic that targets disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli while preserving the beneficial gut microbiome, unlike current broad-spectrum treatments. Principal investigator Jon Stokes noted that this development was fast-tracked through human-AI collaboration, highlighting the potential of AI-guided drug discovery. The AI model, DiffDock, predicted that enterololin attacks the bacterial protein complex LolCDE in just 100 seconds, a process that normally takes up to two years and costs around $2 million, showcasing a massive acceleration in essential drug development steps.
