Radical Numerics Treats Human Patient With AI-Designed Bacteriophages for Drug-Resistant E. Coli

A Menlo Park biotech startup has announced the first clinical use of artificial intelligence-designed viruses to treat a life-threatening bacterial infection in a human patient, marking a watershed moment in synthetic biology and personalized medicine. Radical Numerics, founded in 2025 by researchers from the Arc Institute, disclosed October 20 that it administered an AI-generated cocktail of bacteriophages—viruses that target bacteria—to combat an antibiotic-resistant E. coli infection under a physician-led compassionate-use authorization. The phage variants were designed using Omnii-1, the company's proprietary multimodal genome language model, and validated in laboratory tests to kill the patient's specific bacterial isolate.