McMaster's free ESKAPE AI screens 12 million molecules for antibiotics

The tool arrives against a stark backdrop. Drug-resistant infections kill more than a million people each year, yet big pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned the search for new antibiotics because the work is time-consuming and expensive. Jonathan Stokes, the microbiologist who runs the lab, described the situation as a perfect storm of rising resistance, a lean antibiotic pipeline, and enormous economic headwinds, noting that a new drug can cost $1 billion to make with little chance of earning the money back.

ESKAPE is designed to lower the barrier for the researchers who remain in the field. Because it is free, needs only an internet connection, and lets scientists keep ownership of their discoveries without sharing the compounds they submit, it may draw in labs that could not otherwise afford large-scale screening. The body also notes a separate effort by researchers at MIT and Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, which uses generative deep learning to create entirely new molecules targeting antibiotic resistance, suggesting the search is moving on more than one front.