Last checked at 
(Alliance News) - Poolbeg Pharma PLC on Thursday said it has made a significant breakthrough in its "world-first" influenza artificial intelligence programme with CytoReason Ltd.
The London-based infectious disease focused biopharmaceutical company said it 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 analysed using CytoReason's industry-leading AI-led platform," Poolbeg said in a statement.
The analysis has led to the discovery of multiple novel drug targets for the treatment of influenza, Poolbeg said.
It said identification of drug targets from this 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 analysis that took several years, Poolbeg said.
However, Poolbeg said it has now identified multiple novel drug targets in "just 15 months", via using CytoReason's AI technology.
CytoReason's analysis also independently confirmed the significance of the p38 MAP kinase pathway in influenza, Poolbeg said, providing further validation for Poolbeg's POLB 001 programme.
Poolbeg said it is actively exploring the most effective way to further develop the novel drug targets in order to generate value and looks forward to updating shareholders about the progress of this programme in "due course".
It also noted that this marks Poolbeg's second successful AI Programme, following the identification of potential new drug candidates for respiratory syncytial virus, as announced in December last year.
"Our collaboration with CytoReason has put Poolbeg at the forefront of AI drug discovery. CytoReason's deep interrogation of the uniquely rich data derived from human challenge trials has deepened our knowledge of influenza, resulting in the identification of multiple novel influenza drug targets," said Poolbeg Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Skillington.
"There is a significant unmet need for new and better treatments for vulnerable patients with influenza and this is a major milestone in the delivery of new therapies that can improve patient outcomes and global health."
CytoReason CEO David Harel added: "Once again, 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 target discovery process. More importantly, these impressive results would not be possible without the commitment, transparency, and reciprocity of both teams."
Shares in Poolbeg were down 6.7% to 8.26 pence each in London on Thursday afternoon.
By Greg Rosenvinge, Alliance News reporter
Comments and questions to newsroom@alliancenews.com
Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
