A human subject has been injected with an AI-designed virus aiming to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so let's see how that turns out (www.techradar.com)

San Francisco-based lab Radical Numerics has made a groundbreaking announcement: it successfully administered an AI-designed bacteriophage, Omnii-1, to a patient suffering from a drug-resistant E. coli infection. This represents the first time an AI-generated organism has been used as medicine in a human, marking a significant milestone in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Bacteriophages, which specifically target bacteria while sparing human cells, have been explored for over a century but are seeing renewed interest as traditional antibiotics fail. The AI model was able to precisely edit the tail fiber gene of T7 phages, yielding impressive results with a high viability rate of nearly 70% for its engineered variants compared to just 4.8% for random controls. However, the details regarding the patient’s clinical outcomes remain undisclosed, as the treatment's results are yet to undergo peer review, raising concerns within the scientific community. While the potential for AI to accelerate the design of tailored phage therapies could revolutionize treatments for severe infections, it also brings significant governance and bioethics challenges surrounding virus engineering. The implications for future medical applications and the landscape of infectious disease treatment could be profound, depending on the outcome of this pioneering case.