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Computer designs drug to fight the flu

Human trials have begun of a ­totally artificial-intelligence-designed drug for combating the flu.

Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky who is research director of Vaxine Pty Ltd. Picture: SA Health
Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky who is research director of Vaxine Pty Ltd. Picture: SA Health

Human trials have begun of an anti-­flu drug totally designed by artificial intelligence. The drug’s development ­involved feeding an artificial ­intelligence system 60 to 80 “good” drugs and “bad” drugs and using machine learning. The AI system generated trillions of theoretical drugs ­before creating a shortlist that has been tested in a lab.

Flinders University professor Nikolai Petrovsky said the drug was added to the traditional influenza vaccine. It stimulates the immune system to fight the virus. He said trials of the final version had just begun at eight US centres.

Professor Petrovsky is research director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, an Australian biotechnology company the university spun off to focus on developing innovative vaccine technologies.

The university yesterday quoted sobering statistics on the flu’s toll this year. More than 220 people have died from flu-related illnesses in Australia so far, including 57 in NSW and 48 in Victoria. There have been 96,000 confirmed cases of flu across Australia this year.

Professor Petrovsky said the improved flu drug was believed to be the first human drug in the world to be completely designed by artificial intelligence.

“This represents the start of a new era where artificial intelligence is going to play an increasingly dominant role in drug discovery and design,” he said.

He said the AI algorithm was fed “good and bad” drugs and trained to design more suitable drugs. It looked at trillions of randomly generated theoretical drugs and predicted which were likely to be good. The top ranking 50 or so were then prepared and tested in laboratory trials using blood samples.

The best choice has now been deployed in US human trials. “We don't have to test the drug in a human to start with, we can test it on human blood to see if it's working.”

He said the new drug didn’t replace the vaccine. Rather it bolted onto the existing flu vaccine and made it more effective. “It’s what we call an adjuvant. It works by targeting particular immune receptors in the body, activating them and switching them on when they see a flu vaccine. “The immune system responds much more strongly to the flu vaccine which gives you much stronger protection,” he said.

He said the university was also developing the next generation flu vaccine.

Professor Petrovsky said current flu vaccines sometimes were ineffective. He said The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US found the current flu vaccine to be about 50pc effective but in some years it had little effectiveness. He said the published effectiveness of last year’s vaccine was about 10pc.

Vaccines sometimes didn’t match prevailing flu viruses and sometimes viruses grown in eggs didn’t match the real-world ones. That can completely wipe out its effectiveness.

Professor Petrovsky said he was being honest about the science. “The public health message is always to have the flu shot and I'm not telling anyone not to have the flu shot,” he said. “The message is that the flu vaccine works.”

He said the adjutant drug developed with AI could be bolted onto any year’s vaccine. “The bolt on doesn't change year-to-year. For the next 100 years it will be the same.”

He said human tests in the US began ten days ago but the big push would be this week. “That’s when they will be officially recruiting the 240 subjects in eight academic centres across the US”.

Professor Petrovsky said the research was US funded which is why tests were there and not in Australia. “The (Australian) government has not supported the program.”

Asked if he felt miffed about that, Professor Petrovsky said: “I think anyone would be if they’ve made a breakthrough and they have to hand it over to other people in the US to take it further because you can’t get any local traction.” He said Vaxine retained the intellectual property.

He said it was better conducting human testing as an “off-season trial” in the US summer.

“If you're doing a vaccine trial where you're measuring antibodies to flu, you want to know that the antibodies are going up because of the vaccine, not because someone happened to get infected by the flu.”

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/computer-designs-drug-to-fight-the-flu/news-story/e7faedf134c98926ceaa976e3f16c59f