Funding will progress the manufacture of oligonucleotide therapeutics alongside machine learning
Intellegens, a company focusing on machine learning (ML) within R&D, has revealed that it has gained a £1.6m grant from Innovate UK – part of UK Research and Innovation.
The grant will be used in order to apply ML in the area of oligonucleotide therapies and will involve a partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI).
The two-year initiative will seek to validate Intellegens’ Alchemite technology, a tool to boost productivity and production of oligonucleotide therapeutic manufacture through the optimisation of quality control strategies and performance prediction. The project has also been granted access to the CPI Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre.
Meanwhile, support for the project is being delivered with direct input from several research organisations, including pharma companies such as Novartis and specialist biotech companies including Silence Therapeutics.
Intellegens’ Alchemite is a set of ML artificial intelligence algorithms and tools that support the design and development of chemicals, materials and formulations. This adaptation of ML can effectively extract information from sparse, complicated datasets.
The technology has been applied to processes across multiple industries, including modelling small-molecule drug pharmacokinetics and developing novel additive manufacturing processes.
Dave Tudor, managing director of pharmaceuticals at CPI, explained: “We are really excited to be working with Intellegens on this project to help harness the potential of oligonucleotides to treat a variety of conditions. Oligonucleotides are complex molecules and the process of bringing them to market is costly, meaning very few companies are able to harness this potentially life-saving and life-changing technology.”
He added: “Through CPI’s Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, we will look to bring together a community of experts from the pharmaceutical and technology companies to support the development of the Alchemite tools, reducing development times and improving manufacturability of oligonucleotide therapeutics.”
Ben Pellegrini, chief executive officer at Intellegens, concluded: “The potential of oligonucleotide therapeutics to treat a vast spectrum of diseases is an exciting prospect that is unfortunately held back by manufacturing capabilities. We are extremely pleased to announce this Innovate UK funded collaborative project with CPI and experts from across the life sciences to apply Alchemite to improve manufacturing productivity of these next-generation therapeutics.”
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