Generative AI and physics team up to design new antibiotics from scratch

Antibiotic resistance is a slow motion crisis that rarely gets urgency, partly because a new antibiotic can take a decade and a billion dollars to reach patients while offering thin margins once it arrives. Combining generative chemistry with physics simulations of how peptides interact with bacterial membranes could meaningfully shrink both the timeline and the failure rate of early candidates. The open question is whether pharma ever picks this up, given how badly the economics of antibiotics have discouraged investment regardless of how cheap discovery gets.