Poolbeg Pharma has signed a deal with CytoReason, which will provide artificial intelligence-based analysis of its influenza disease progression data.
CytoReason is used by five of the world’s top ten pharma companies, including Pfizer, Sanofi, Roche and Merck. The company deploys its AI modelling to assess immune cell behaviour.
“This exciting deal is all about creating opportunities,” said Poolbeg CEO, Jeremy Skillington. “Opportunities to unlock the potential of our unique bank of human challenge data and to develop drugs for infectious disease more quickly and cost-effectively. And opportunities to tackle the growing global threat of influenza.”
“This is the first time AI analysis will be undertaken on influenza human challenge trial data and we look forward to the results early next year,” he added.
Poolbeg has underlined that flu cases are at their highest levels globally since the beginning of the pandemic over two years ago. The company’s lead asset, POLB 001, which is advancing towards its first human challenge trial in June, was identified using the unique disease progression data available from human challenge trials.
Human challenge trials are carefully controlled studies which involve deliberately infecting a subject with a pathogen or bug, in order to study the effects of that infection. The aim is to find out what level of immune response – antibodies and T cells – exists in our bodies to prevent infection when healthy people are exposed to the virus. This is the immune response that then needs to be induced with a new vaccine.
These types of studies are pivotal in helping refine flu vaccines – if researchers know what level of immune response that the vaccine needs to induce, it will make future vaccine development much more rapid and efficient.
