Health care
Health care
BY KAMERYN GRIESSER
BY KAMERYN GRIESSER
St. David’s pioneers heart treatment
UT researchers use AI to create costly Alzheimer’s drug for less
The bigger picture
Currently, St. David’s Medical Center is the only one of six St. David’s HealthCare locations to o er the treatment. Eventually, Natale said he hopes the pulsed eld ablation system will evolve to be able to treat a wider range of heart arrhythmia conditions.
From chat bots to art production, new uses for arti cial intelligence are blooming left and right. Now, researchers from the University of Texas have found a way to harness the power of AI to create an expensive Alzheimer’s medication for less. The goal The study, published in March, utilized an AI tool developed by UT post-doctoral researcher Danny Diaz to create the active ingredient in the common Alzheimer’s medication galantamine. Galantamine is typically manufactured using da odils. However, the extraction process is time consuming and costly due to unpredictable crop yields and weather, Diaz said. Just one prescription of galantamine requires hundreds of da odils and costs around $70-$116, according to health care technology company Oracle Health. Instead of relying on da odils, Diaz said the goal of the study is to eventually use bacteria to produce
the active ingredient. “Basically the goal is to turn sugar, which is like food for the bacteria, into a pharmaceutical drug for Alzheimer’s,” said Diaz, who now leads the Deep Proteins group at the Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning. “Eventually, the hope is to make the drug much more a ordable.” How it works By genetically modifying bacteria, the researchers can essentially “program” the microbes to create the active ingredient in galantamine as a byproduct of its normal metabolic function. Diaz said the challenge has been creating the right instruction manual for the bacteria, which involves changing their protein structures. “There are almost in nite combinations [of protein sequences] to try. ... So the AI can narrow that research space down and save time by signi - cantly lowering the risk of not nding something that works,” Diaz said.
The Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at Austin’s St. David’s Medical Center was the rst hospital in the U.S. to use a new treatment for heart arrhythmia following nal approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January. Heart arrhythmia is a condition most common among middle-aged patients that causes irregular heart beats, increasing the risk for stroke and cardiac failure. Drs. Andrea Natale and Amin Al-Ahmad from the TCAI were among 67 global operators chosen to begin testing the technology in 2021. Following its approval, the treatment can now be used at hospitals across the country. The treatment, called pulsed eld ablation, delivers electrical pulses to cardiac tissue to destroy cells causing irregular rhythms, making small scars or ablations, according
Treating arrhythmia Traditional methods use heat or cold to disrupt irregular heart signals, but pulsed eld ablation:
“It’s really hard for humans to wrap their head around a lot of these
problems because they’re just so big and expensive to iterate. ... AI is going to be revolutionary in how we manufacture drugs.”
Does not use heat or cold energy
Uses short electrical pulses to destroy cells
DANNY DIAZ, UT POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER
This historic milestone represents the biggest advancement in the electrophysiology eld in
Is considered safer than other methods of ablation Typically results in fewer complications post-procedure
decades, as it will allow patients to be treated more safely and e ectively, ultimately restoring their quality of life. DR. ANDREA NATALE, TCAI EXECUTIVE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
What’s next So far, Diaz said the team is about one-fourth of the way to completing the bacteria’s proper mutation, and he expects the study could wrap up within the next ve years. Diaz said he believes AI research will have the largest impact in biotechnology and health care.
SOURCES: MAYO CLINIC, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, TEXAS CARDIAC ARRHYTHMIA INSTITUTE AT ST. DAVID’S MEDICAL CENTER COMMUNITY IMPACT
to a news release. Previous systems used excessive heat or cold to destroy the cells, which could damage surrounding tissue, the news release said.
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