Pneumotrieste 2024: AI in medicine becomes reality
Scientific medical meeting inspired by the words of Umberto Veronesi "treatment is better where research is also done"
TRIESTE – Using a type of artificial intelligence known as ‘deep learning’, applied to a data collection method called ‘system biology’, James Collins, a researcher at MIT in Boston, has discovered a class of antibiotics capable of killing a drug-resistant bacterium (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – Mrsa), which causes more than 10,000 deaths in the United States alone every year.
The results of the research were illustrated during PneumoTrieste 2024, a medical-scientific meeting inspired by the words of Umberto Veronesi “treatment is better where research is also done”, organized by the Trieste Pneumology department directed by Professor Marco Confalonieri, which was attended by around 600 specialists from all over Italy and abroad, announced a note from the Giuliano Isontina University Health Authority (Asugi).
Collins, awarded the Clarivate citation in 2023 (a sort of ‘antechamber of the Nobel’) highlights that “the new method based on artificial intelligence requires a lot of preliminary data on bacteria, on possible candidate compounds to become drugs, on the mechanisms of cellular damage and protection of the human organism to then allow, very quickly, to predict which molecules are most suitable for that particular microbe without damaging the ‘good’ microbes that for example we have on the skin and in the intestine”.
Professor Umberto Meduri of Memphis instead highlights the many properties of a powerful ‘drug-hormone’, from our body (as well as a well-known drug), which acts on all cells except red blood cells, coordinating the body’s response to stress.
Molecules such as cortisone together with vitamins can imitate, at appropriate paraphysiological doses, he explains, what the human organism does in each of its cells when negative stress causes damage, helping to repair cells and restore normality in an increasingly natural way and physiological compared to drugs that interfere with biological mechanisms.
There will also be space for infectious diseases at PneumoTrieste 2024, although Covid-19 is no longer in the spotlight.
Giovanni Battista Migliori, collaborator of the World Health Organization for the control of tuberculosis, underlines that “in Italy a program dedicated to tuberculosis would be needed, also taking into account the strong influx from countries with high incidence linked to poverty: a national TB program, with a competent manager and an agile and representative committee, which acts electronically on urgent issues and develops a coordinated strategic plan for regional health systems, could help achieve the goal of eliminating tuberculosis from Italy by 2030”, concludes .
Artificial intelligence and robotics are also used in bronchoscopy, progress illustrated by Pietro Valdastri, professor at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom: an equipment that allows robot-guided bronchoscopies to be performed with thin wires that try not to cause any disturbance to the patient and the at the same time they can reach peripheral points of the lung to perform biopsies or treatments with laser and heat.
“For now, the robotic colonoscopy is ready which does not cause pain and does not require anesthesia, while the pulmonary equipment will still take 3-5 years”, concludes Valdastri.
