On Feb. 20, 2020, using a machine-learning algorithm, researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced that they had identified a powerful new antibiotic compound. In laboratory tests, the drug killed many of the world’s most problematic disease-causing bacteria, including some strains that are resistant to all known antibiotics. It also cleared infections in two different mouse models.

The computer model, which can screen more than a hundred million chemical compounds in a matter of days, was designed to pick out potential antibiotics that kill bacteria using different mechanisms than those of existing drugs.