The world's first human drug, completely designed by using artificial intelligence, is currently in the testing stage. Scientists from Flinders University in Australia have developed the vaccine for seasonal influenza using an AI program called SAM (Search Algorithm for Ligands).
The team of researchers led by Nikolai Petrovsky have named this vaccine ‘Turbo charged flu vaccine’ which has an extra element in it that would help stimulate the human immune system to produce more antibodies against the virus as compared to the conventional vaccine. It is the primary human drug in the world to be created using Artificial Intelligence, they said.
The algorithm developed by the team works by recognizing the vaccines which will be able to work against the disease and which will not be able to do so. In the process, adjuvants-substances that enhance body’s immune response to an antigen were used.
The team also developed another algorithm, which could create trillions of compounds.
Influenza, commonly called the flu, is an infectious disease caused by the influenza virus. It can cause serious health problems and even death. Flu cases have surged in Australia with nearly 96,000 confirmed influenza cases in 2019 so far. This has been the highest in the past few years. Nearly 230 people have already died out of influenza related complications.
The algorithm acknowledges and shortlists the ten most effective drugs from the long list. The researchers took only a few compounds which were synthesized in lesser time. It was then tested on animal blood and the human blood. It took them two years to come up with this new vaccine.
The vaccine is now ready for clinical trials in the US which would take about 12 months. It will be sponsored by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. “This represents the start of a new era where artificial intelligence is going to play an increasingly dominant role in drug discovery and design,” says Professor Petrovsky. “The advantage of using AI is that it not only speeds up the process but it also finds the most effective compounds”, he added.
It was the Flinders team which developed a new swine flu vaccine to combat the 2009 pandemic for the first in the world. It had won them many awards, including the AMP National Innovation Award at the Telstra Business Award.
