CEPI to pump in $1.9 million to develop vaccines against Disease X using AI

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will provide US$1.9 million to Leipzig University, Germany, to use artificial intelligence (AI) for development of vaccines to fight diseases that have a potential to turn into a pandemic, it said on Monday.

The AI technology will help the scientists to analyse the structures of viruses from 10 priority viral families from which the next Disease X could emerge. Disease X, per the World Health Organization (WHO), represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently not known to cause human disease.

The scientists will initially focus on paramyxoviruses and arenaviruses, which include the likes of Nipah virus and Lassa virus, respectively. The Leipzig University team will then identify potential antigenic targets and develop virtual antigen designs that could be adapted to rapidly create vaccine candidates for clinical assessment.

“Computational vaccine design including artificial intelligence holds the promise for a rapid response to emerging viral diseases. Methods that are developed in our institute will be applied to this challenging task. We are very confident that we will bring a unique expertise to the project that will design vaccines for the future,” Dr Jens Meiler, Director of the Institute of Drug Discovery, Leipzig University, said.

According to CEPI, fewer than 300 viruses are known to be able to infect people, and only a small fraction of these has pandemic potential. The viruses known to infect humans all derive from about 25 viral families. CEPI aims to store antigen designs developed by Leipzig University in a vaccine library so they can be quickly used to develop vaccine candidates in the event of the outbreak of a novel pathogenic threat. In this scenario, these antigen designs could be taken “off the shelf”, gene sequences for which could then be inserted into an appropriate rapid-response vaccine platform to start production of vaccines for clinical testing.

“The creation of a vaccine library is a huge task and cannot be achieved by any one country or organisation working alone. It will require countries that fund the development of medical countermeasures to coordinate their investments, and to share data and information when a viral outbreak with pandemic potential occurs,” Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said.

“Recent advances in AI technology have made it possible to quickly and effectively model potential viral vaccine targets. Creating an accessible repository of these AI-generated antigen designs is a critical first step in creating such a vaccine library, the benefits of which would be game changing,” he said.

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