A new study has revealed that Eve, an artificial intelligence (AI) robot developed by a British university, has become a "great hero" after helping scientists find a malaria killer in one of the ingredients of a common toothpaste.
Researchers at Cambridge University in Great Britain used Eve - 'the Robot Scientist' - in a high-performance screen and found that triclosan, an ingredient found in many toothpastes, can help fight the strains of a malaria parasite that has become resistant to one of the drugs currently used to treat the disease. The Eve Robot was developed by a group of scientists from the British universities of Manchester, Aberystwyth in Wales and Cambridge.
The results of the study by the Cambridge researchers have been published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday. With the help of Eve, the researchers found that triclosan inhibits the spread of a type of malaria parasite enzyme called DHFR, thereby stopping the parasite's growth in the blood.
The finding questioned a previous assumption that triclosan inhibits the growth of malaria plasmodium parasite culture during the blood stage, since it targets an enzyme known as enoyl reductase (ENR) found in the liver.
Cambridge researchers found that triclosan was able to attack and act on the DHFR enzyme even in parasites resistant to the antimalarial drug, pyrimethamine. Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite called plasmodium. It is transmitted exclusively through the bites of infected mosquitoes, only the type Anopheles which act as "vectors". In the human body, the disease parasites multiply in the liver and then after a variable incubation infect red blood cells and spread throughout the body, causing symptoms and even life-threatening complications.
With triclosan's new function, which inhibits both ENR and DHFR, the researchers believe it is possible that the parasite could be targeted at both the liver and later blood stages.
Elizabeth Bilsland, principal author of the study, said that the discovery by the Eve robot on triclosan, able to inhibit both the ENR and the DHFR, offers a hope to start thinking about being able to develop a new drug for this pathology.
Professor Ross King of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Manchester who followed the development of the study said that Eve automates and speeds up the drug discovery process, including automated hypothesis testing to explain observations, perform experiments and automate the search.