AI company seeks pharma partners to progress Covid-19 drugs
A Cambridge-based AI company is seeking pharmaceutical and biotech partners to help progress top-ranked therapeutic candidates for Covid-19.
AI VIVO is searching for partners to help it progress therapeutic candidates the company has identified as being potential treatments for Covid-19. Earlier this year, AI VIVO used its systems pharmacology platform to identify several candidate drugs that are likely to be effective in treating Covid-19. In April, five drugs identified by the company had moved on to clinical trials, a number which has since increased to 41.
The company has also compiled a list of drug combinations from its list and are aiming to share the results with pharma companies and clinical trial investigators. AI VIVO system is based on a phenotypic drug discovery methodology and does not rely on any prior knowledge or known information related to the disease or compounds. To identify drugs most likely to be effective in treating Covid-19, AI VIVO used samples from infected cells to build its model for the disease, which was then used to rank 90,000 compounds.
The overlap of candidates identified by AI VIVO that pharma companies have also selected from their pipelines includes:
- Tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as Imatinib (Novartis) and Nintedanib (Boehringer Ingelheim)
- Rheumatoid arthritis drugs including Tofacitinib (Pfizer)
- Ruxolitinib (Incyte) and Baracitinib (Eli Lilly) as JAK inhibitors
- Valsartan (Novartis) as an angiotensin receptor inhibitor
- Ibrutinib as a BTK inhibitor (Janssen Pharmaceutica – AbbVie)
- Dapagliflozin as a SGLT2 inhibitor (AstraZeneca)
Dr Peyman Gifani, AI VIVO founder and CEO, said: “This is a great validation of AI VIVO’s phenotypic approach to modelling diseases and the effects of drugs. Our panel of experts believe there are combinations of other top-ranked drugs that will be more effective than any single drug and we are keen to share our results with pharma companies and clinical trial investigators to support the fight against Covid-19. We are also offering to cross check the candidates from other investigators to help predict combinations to improve drug efficacy, reduce undesirable side effects and optimise the dosage.’’
Dr David Cleevely CBE, lead investor in AI VIVO, said: “Now that our approach has been validated, we are expanding our interactions with government agencies and pharmaceutical companies to review the top ranked drugs which have not yet been selected for trials, but have the potential to make a real difference in the fight against Covid-19.”