Multiple drug targets for the treatment of influenza identified using AI program

Poolbeg Pharma, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company specializing in infectious and other prevalent diseases with a high unmet medical need, declares a big breakthrough in its world first influenza Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) Programme with CytoReason. Poolbeg has been working with CytoReason since March 2022.

Poolbeg’s unique disease progression data from influenza human challenge trials combined with CytoReason’s broad repositories of curated disease data were analyzed using CytoReason’s industry-leading AI-led platform. The evaluation has led to the invention of multiple novel drug targets for the treatment of influenza.

Identification of drug targets from this unique data-set has previously been successful as p38 MAP Kinase, inhibited by POLB 001, was identified as a driver of severe influenza but this required manual evaluation that took several years. Nonetheless, through the utilization of CytoReason’s cutting-edge AI technology, Poolbeg has now identified multiple novel drug targets in only 15 months. Furthermore, CytoReason’s evaluation independently confirmed the importance of the p38 MAP kinase pathway in influenza, providing further validation for Poolbeg’s POLB 001 programme.

The Company is actively exploring probably the most effective option to further develop the novel drug targets with a purpose to generate value and appears forward to updating shareholders in regards to the progress of this programme in the end. This marks Poolbeg’s second successful AI Programme, following the identification of potential latest drug candidates for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) announced in December 2022.

Our collaboration with CytoReason has put Poolbeg on the forefront of AI drug discovery. CytoReason’s deep interrogation of the uniquely wealthy data derived from human challenge trials has deepened our knowledge of influenza, leading to the identification of multiple novel influenza drug targets. There may be a big unmet need for brand spanking new and higher treatments for vulnerable patients with influenza and this can be a major milestone within the delivery of recent therapies that may improve patient outcomes and global health.”

​​​​​​​Jeremy Skillington, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Poolbeg Pharma

David Harel, Chief Executive Officer of CytoReason, said: “Once more, we’re pleased to see that leveraging CytoReason’s computational disease models to extract insights from Poolbeg’s unique human challenge data can optimise the goal discovery process. More importantly, these impressive results wouldn’t be possible without the commitment, transparency, and reciprocity of each teams.”