Human receives AI-designed virus for the first time

Researchers have administered AI-designed, bacteria-targeting viruses to a person in what they claim is a first, but don’t press them for results: They’re not ready to say how it went quite yet.

Radical Numerics, a San Francisco-based AI lab developing AI models for bioscience, announced the treatment this week, claiming it marks the first time a cocktail containing AI-designed bacteriophages has been administered to a human patient under a compassionate-use arrangement.

These aren’t just any viruses, mind you: Omnii-1, the AI model publicly unveiled by Radical Numerics this week, was used to design viable bacteriophages, a type of virus that specifically infects bacteria.

Therapeutic use of phages isn’t novel in and of itself, with the bacteria-targeting viruses being sought as an alternative to combat the rise of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that are increasingly rendering antibiotics ineffective.

Phages have a number of potential advantages over antibiotics, most notably their ability to target specific bacterial strains – a big plus when it comes …