Finding new medicines for fungal mycetoma, a disease that often ends in amputation
- Good it would do
- 4 / 5
- Can AI help
- 3 / 5
- How neglected
- 4 / 5
- Can we check it
- 3 / 5
Why it's stuck
Mycetoma attracts very little research. A bibliometric study found only about 400 to 500 papers on it in the 21 years from 1999 to 2020.
What we'd try
MycetOS publishes all of its screening results openly, including an early screen in which 215 of 800 compounds stopped the fungus growing. Compute could train models on this open data and screen very large virtual compound libraries for new active chemical series.
What could stop us
The open MycetOS screening dataset is small, so models trained on it may predict poorly, and the value depends on the MycetOS team testing the picks in the lab.
Do you know the answer?
One reply from someone in the field can settle what our AI can't.