September 17, 2025
Barry Bunin, PhD
Founder & CEO
Collaborative Drug Discovery
“AI Drugs to Tackle MRSA Herald ‘Second Golden Age in Antibiotics.” That’s the headline for a The Times of London article about Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology using artificial intelligence to design two antibiotics that could provide a powerful weapon against superbugs including MRSA. The article notes: “In what scientists hope could start a ‘second golden age’ in antibiotic discovery, the drugs were able to kill antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea and MRSA in the laboratory and in tests on infected mice, according to the study.” In the study, published in the journal Cell, the scientists used AI to design more than 36 possible compounds, which were each then screened by AI for antimicrobial properties. Professor James Collins, the senior author, said: “We’re excited about the new possibilities that this project opens up for antibiotics development. Our work shows the power of AI from a drug design standpoint, and enables us to exploit much larger chemical spaces that were previously inaccessible.”
* * *
“‘Ozempic For All’ is Starting to Make Economic Sense.” That’s the headline The Washington Post carries for an opinion piece suggesting that “As prices come down and new benefits emerge, universal access to GLP-1s could become sound fiscal policy.” Gary Winslett, Associate Professor of Political Science, and Director of the International Politics and Economics Program at Middlebury College in Vermont, writes: “By now, you’ve probably heard about the weight-loss benefits of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide), but scientists are still discovering that they have all kinds of other benefits, too: They help prevent strokes and heart attacks, fight kidney disease and Parkinson’s, curb addiction, and lower risks for several particularly nasty cancers. At this rate, just about every American will have some condition or risk factor that makes these drugs look appealing in their lifetime. And when that day comes, they should be able to get them. Universal access to GLP-1s should be the explicit goal of our federal government.” Dr. Winslett looks at the potential financial benefits. “Obesity-related health care costs the United States about $173 billion annually, and that doesn’t include all those other medical problems that GLP-1s might be able to address. … Medicare and Medicaid together spend about $1.9 trillion a year. That’s the proper baseline to be thinking from, not zero."
* * *
“Mayo Clinic Deploys NVIDIA Supercomputer to Fast-Track Life-Saving Medical Breakthroughs” That’s the headline for an article in Interesting Engineering about Mayo Clinic taking a major step towards integrating AI solutions in healthcare after deploying the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD supercomputer with NVIDIA DGX B200 systems – an advanced AI infrastructure with state-of-the-art AI compute capabilities. The NVIDIA Blackwell-powered DGX SuperPOD is efficient enough to process large, high-resolution imaging required for training AI models, and will help Mayo Clinic accelerate pathology slide analysis and foundation model development. This advanced computing infrastructure will also advance Mayo Clinic’s generative AI and multimodal digital pathology foundation model development. “Our aspiration for AI is to meaningfully improve patient outcomes by detecting disease early enough to intervene,” said Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., Medical Director of the Department of Strategy and leader of Mayo Clinic’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Program. “What was once a hypothetical — ‘If only we had the right data’ — is now becoming reality thanks to AI and advanced computing."
* * *
“A Pill for Sleep Apnea Could Be on the Horizon.” That’s the headline for an article in The New York Times about Apnimed’s announcement of a second round of positive Phase 3 clinical trial results for the company’s oral pill that can be taken just before bedtime to help keep a person’s airway open. On a personal note, I use a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) due to minor Sleep Apnea, and so my partner doesn’t hear snoring. In any case, the new pill, called AD109, is a combination of atomoxetine and aroxybutynin, two drugs that tell your brain to keep the airway muscles activated throughout the night, leaving the breathing path clear. Dr. Sanjay R. Patel, a sleep researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who led the new trial, described trying to breathe through a constricted airway like slurping soda through a soggy paper straw. “If that straw is really floppy, then when you suck, you suck the walls shut and you can’t get any of the soda,” he said. The article quotes Dr. Daniel Combs, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Arizona, who was not involved with the trial but is studying a drug similar to AD109, as saying the drugs “essentially trick those muscles into thinking they’re awake.”
Can NVIDIA-Powered AI Reverse Pharma’s Eroom’s Law? “From 2012 to 2022, adjusting for inflation, spending on pharmaceutical research and development increased by almost half to roughly $250bn, according to Bernstein Research. Yet the number of novel drug approvals remained broadly flat. Artificial intelligence could help.” That’s how an article in The Financial Times sets the stage for the significance AI could play in drug discovery. And what is “Eroom’s Law? The article explains: “Jack Scannell and fellow researchers, writing over a decade ago, dubbed this Eroom’s Law. This is the backwards version of Moore’s Law, which predicts that the number of transistors that can be squeezed on to a microchip doubles every two years. The number of new drugs per $1bn spent on R&D has halved about every nine years since 1950. Trials from Phase 1 to launch still take a decade on average, calculates McKinsey, and even then only one in 10 succeeds.”
Barry A. Bunin, PhD, is the Founder & CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery, which provides a modern approach to drug discovery research informatics trusted globally by thousands of leading researchers. The CDD Vault is a hosted biological and chemical database that securely manages your private and external data.