It has long been no secret to anyone that the combination of artificial intelligence and robotics can help people recover from a variety of injuries, including the spinal cord. However, only now the combination of these technologies has managed to reach a completely new “level of benefit”.
The reason is that a team of researchers led by the Rutgers School of Medicine used the technology to stabilize the enzyme chondroitinase ABC (ChABC), which can break down scar tissue from spinal cord injuries and stimulate tissue regeneration. Where the enzyme lasted only a few hours at standard body temperature, it now works for more than a week, which in turn is more than enough to have a more significant effect.
Going into more detail, the researchers decided to start by using machine learning to identify synthetic copolymers (artificial polymers made up of more than one monomer) that would last the longest inside a person. Liquid-handling robots synthesized copolymers and tested them. According to Rutgers School of Medicine Associate Professor and Lead Investigator Adam Gormley, this was one of the “first times” that artificial intelligence and robotics were used in tandem to produce therapeutic proteins that were effective to such a high degree.
But be that as it may, in any case it is extremely important to note that the stabilized enzyme is not suitable for the functional treatment of spinal cord injuries, at least at the moment. The scientists noted that their technological convergence has created a “promising path” to long-term tissue regeneration, but is not yet a solution. However, this project highlights one of the benefits of using artificial intelligence technologies to develop a wide variety of treatments. Algorithms can find compositions that would be difficult for researchers to find, or that could be extremely time-consuming to work with, making potential future treatments much more practical where they have not been used before.
