Could AI Save us From the Next Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic was an eye opener for the world on how quickly diseases and pathogens can emerge and spread globally, wreaking havoc on societies, economies, and healthcare systems. While the pharmaceutical industry scrambled for vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, AI could give us the edge over the next global health threat, says Jeremy Skillington, PhD, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma.

Unfortunately, we’re living in a time where it’s not a matter of if, but when the next new pandemic will hit. This is driven by a number of factors like globalisation and climate change. We know viruses are constantly mutating through the process of evolution and natural selection, with the risk that a virus could spread from one species to another. And with factors like climate change, for example, we know that humans are coming into closer contact with animals as we encroach into their habitats. This proximity increases the likelihood of zoonotic diseases, which are infections transmitted from animals to humans.

We know about this all too well with COVID-19, found to have originated from bats. Once spread, we saw how easily COVID-19 gained traction through transport hubs and other public places. Beyond COVID-19 there are other imminent threats including influenza and also avian flu, which has the potential to lead to an outbreak in humans. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of being able to react swiftly to an emerging health threat. While there has been lots of buzz about the use of Artificial intelligence (AI) in other sectors and parts of society, we’re increasingly seeing its huge potential in the acceleration of drug development.

Increased computer processing speeds and technology power has made it possible to detect novel drug targets from very large disease datasets much quicker, allowing for a faster industry and in turn global response to emerging pathogens. Novel drugs can also follow rapidly through analysis of the target’s 3D protein structure and AI designing drugs to interfere with the protein’s activity.

Biotechs are working with technology companies, thanks to the vast increases in computing power and availability of genetic and disease data. Even before the pandemic, in 2019, Insilico Medicine used AI and deep learning to design, synthesise and validate a drug in 46 days – at the time estimated to be 15 times faster than the best pharma companies.

Then by 2021, Google’s sister company DeepMind gave the world access to a protein database from its AlphaFold technology, including structure predictions for all 20,000 proteins in the human body. This is where AI has hit a very interesting stride as we can apply supercomputers to understand biology and disease at a molecular level, and from there come up with new drugs and treatments.

Poolbeg has been working with a number of AI-led partners which has allowed us to fast-track identification of potential drug targets and drug candidates. CytoReason, an AI company based in Israel, has analysed Poolbeg’s human challenge trial data that tracks physiological responses from a volunteer after they are deliberately infected with flu in a safe and controlled clinical setting.

The partnership identified potential drug targets in just 15 months. Based on experiences from hVIVO, the human challenge trial company we demerged from in 2021, we estimate it would take around four years of traditional, non-AI, analysis to come to the same conclusions.

These examples show how AI can decrease risk, decrease costs and increase probability of success in drug research – and when the next pandemic hits it will all be about the speed of getting products into the clinic as we saw with COVID-19. One of the biggest challenges with AI is to overcome the scepticism around new approaches that is natural in the scientific community – it’s up to people like us to produce the product candidates to prove our case.

Once they have convincing data and facts in hand, scientists are prepared to change their minds. Pharma is often criticised for being too slow to adopt new technologies, but although the decision-making process can be very deliberate, once a strategy has been chosen the big companies will stick to it and invest heavily. Pfizer, Takeda, Sanofi and Amgen are the latest high-profile pharma companies to do deals involving AI, and it’s surely the sign of things to come. There is much speculation about the role of AI in society but thanks to this technology, the future for pandemic prevention is looking promising.