An estimated one in five Americans live with chronic pain and current treatment options leave much to be desired. Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Genome Center, and IBM are using artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery in advanced pain management. The team’s deep-learning framework identified multiple gut microbiome-derived metabolites and FDA-approved drugs that can be repurposed to select non-addictive, non-opioid options to treat chronic pain.
The findings, published in Cell Press, represent one of many ways the organizations’ Discovery Accelerator partnership is helping to advance research in healthcare and life sciences.
Treating chronic pain with opioids is still a challenge due to the risk of severe side effects and dependency, says co-first author Yunguang Qiu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cheng’s lab whose research program focuses on developing therapeutics for nervous system disorders. Recent evidence has shown that drugging a specific subset of pain receptors in a protein class called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) can provide non-addictive, non-opioid pain relief. The question is how to target those receptors, Dr. Qiu explains.
A new photonic processor efficiently solves complex NP-complete problems using light, offering faster computation and scalability for future applications in optical neural networks and quantum computing.
As technology continues to evolve, the limitations of traditional electronic computers are becoming more evident, particularly when addressing highly complex computational problems. NP-complete problems, which grow exponentially in difficulty as their size increases, are among the most challenging in computer science. These issues affect a wide range of fields, from biomedicine to transportation and manufacturing. To find more efficient solutions, researchers are turning to alternative computing methods, with optical computing showing significant promise.
Breakthrough in Photonic Processor Development.
The world of personal AI assistants is crowded. No doubt, you’ve probably seen or heard a cacophony of complaints around the recent launches of AI-powered gadgets that are meant to act as personal assistants, while minimizing use of your smartphone. We’ve seen the reviewers trash the Humane AI Pin, and the Teenage Engineering-designed, Rabbit R1.
