{"id":69904,"date":"2025-08-12T11:53:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/?post_type=hdsn_news_post&#038;p=69904"},"modified":"2025-08-12T12:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T02:07:09","slug":"will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle","status":"publish","type":"hdsn_news_post","link":"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/news\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"Will AI uncover our next medical miracle?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Could artificial intelligence (AI) hold the key to the next great medical breakthroughs? After discovering a better way of treating a common, debilitating lung condition with a registered medication \u201chiding in plain sight\u201d, a team of Melbourne scientists believe it could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Respiratory physician <a href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/researcher-profile\/phillip-bardin\/\">Professor Philip Bardin<\/a> and his team at Hudson Institute of Medical Research recently identified that a commonly used treatment for lung fibrosis can be used to great effect in treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), avoiding many drawbacks of current treatments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prof Bardin, the Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Emeritus Director, Monash Lung Sleep Allergy &amp; Immunology, says hundreds of current drugs could have benefits beyond their original uses, and AI is the perfect tool to identify them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His team has published a commentary in the prestigious journal <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanres\/article\/PIIS2213-2600(25)00192-4\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lancet Respiratory Medicine<\/a><\/em> suggesting that the ability of AI algorithms to sift rapidly through biological pathways, disease pathologies, clinical trial results, patient records and genetic data could be a game-changer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Working alongside <a href=\"mailto:https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/researcher-profile\/belinda-thomas\/\">Dr Belinda Thomas&nbsp;<\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/researcher-profile\/jane-bourke\/\">Professor Jane Bourke<\/a> at Hudson Institute and Monash Health, and the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, the team established that treating COPD with pirfenidone instead of steroids reduced disease severity, lowering both virus replication and airway inflammation without reducing the immune response, which is what steroids do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team believes this is just one example of a commonly used drug that has shown benefits way beyond its original purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"L-R: Professor Phillip Bardin with his patient Phil Goodman\" class=\"wp-image-69935\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pgil-bardin-and-copd-patient-phil-goodman-1000x668.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>L-R: Professor Philip Bardin with his patient Phil Goodman<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>\u201cRepurposing aspirin for alternative medical conditions has been a success story. Initially used for pain relief, basic research showed its effect on platelet function and blood clotting, and since then it has had great success in reducing coronary events,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAI can review physical and chemical properties of millions of compounds with the potential to independently perform the complex process of drug repurposing, albeit with final human oversight,\u201d they said. \u201cLarge online databases contain details of more than 100 million compounds and more than 300 million biomolecular targets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey can potentially be used to match known pathologies with candidate compounds. The development of AI methods using natural language processing is a powerful way to extract unstructured data to include scientific publications, case reports, clinical trials, and electronic medical records in databases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While admitting that the concept has its challenges, they ask the question: \u201cHow many other cures are hiding in plain sight?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere has never been a systematic way of integrating a mountain of disease pathologies and existing drug information; AI now provides a tool that can connect these domains.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The future of drug discovery might not only lie in novel molecules, but in new applications of old ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n    <div class=\"block--read-more-banner flex z-20 text-blue-800 bg-blue-100 border-l-4 border-blue-500 px-5 py-3 mb-5 sm:mb-8 \">\n        <p class=\"text-base text-blue-800\">\n            <strong class=\"text-sm uppercase\">Read more |&nbsp;<\/strong>\n            <a href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/news\/new-treatment-for-lung-disease-copd-hiding-in-plain-sight\/\" class=\"underline hover:text-pink-500\" target=\"\">New treatment for lung disease COPD \u201chiding in plain sight\u201d<\/a>        <\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    \n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Could artificial intelligence (AI) hold the key to the next great medical breakthroughs? After discovering a better way of treating a common, debilitating lung condition with a registered medication \u201chiding in plain sight\u201d, a team of Melbourne scientists believe it could.&hellip;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/news\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":69933,"menu_order":0,"template":"","issue":[],"tag":[],"story-type":[85],"treatment-type":[],"class_list":["post-69904","hdsn_news_post","type-hdsn_news_post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","story-type-discovery"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Will AI uncover our next medical miracle? - Hudson Institute of Medical Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Using AI, research identified that a commonly used treatment for lung fibrosis can be used to great effect in treating COPD.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/news\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will AI uncover our next medical miracle?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Using AI, research identified that a commonly used treatment for lung fibrosis can be used to great effect in treating COPD.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/news\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Hudson Institute of Medical Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-08-12T02:07:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/hudson.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/copd-ai-feature-jane-belinda-phil.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/hudson.org.au\\\/news\\\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/hudson.org.au\\\/news\\\/will-ai-uncover-our-next-medical-miracle\\\/\",\"name\":\"Will AI uncover our next medical miracle? 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