Cambridge-headquartered Intellegens, which applies machine learning (ML) to accelerate innovation in R&D, has secured a £1.6 million grant from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The grant will be used to apply ML in the emerging field of oligonucleotide therapies. Previously, Innovate UK has backed Cogitat and Aegiq among others.
The project has been granted access to CPI Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC), providing world-leading expertise and state-of-the-art facilities for the duration of the collaboration. Support for the project is provided by six prominent research organisations, encompassing top 10 pharmaceutical companies like Novartis, as well as specialised biotechnology firms such as Silence Therapeutics.
Ben Pellegrini, CEO, Intellegens, said: “The potential of oligonucleotide therapeutics to treat a vast spectrum of diseases is an exciting prospect that is unfortunately held back by manufacturing capabilities. We are extremely pleased to announce this Innovate UK funded collaborative project with CPI and experts from across the life sciences to apply Alchemite to improve manufacturing productivity of these next-generation therapeutics.”
Dave Tudor, Managing Director of Pharmaceuticals at CPI, said: “We are really excited to be working with Intellegens on this project to help harness the potential of oligonucleotides to treat a variety of conditions. Oligonucleotides are complex molecules and the process of bringing them to market is costly, meaning very few companies are able to harness this potentially life-saving and life-changing technology. Through CPI’s Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, we will look to bring together a community of experts from the pharmaceutical and technology companies to support the development of the Alchemite tools, reducing development times and improving manufacturability of oligonucleotide therapeutics.”
Collaboration with CPI
In collaboration with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), the two-year project will augment and validate the company’s ML technology, Alchemite™, as a tool to enhance productivity and yields of oligonucleotide therapeutic manufacture through performance prediction and optimisation of quality control strategies.
This will validate Alchemite as a tool to improve productivity in oligonucleotide process development and manufacturing workflows. Through automated data processing and process modelling, Alchemite will be used for analysis of large datasets, predictions of process performance, and subsequent optimisation of quality control strategies and process parameters.
ML to manufacture oligonucleotide therapeutics
Founded by Ben Pellegrini in 2017, Intellegens enables its customers to apply advanced machine learning methods through its Alchemite™ software, accelerating innovation in materials, chemicals, manufacturing, and beyond. It works with the mission to be the leading machine learning solution for real-world, sparse and noisy data problems in industrial R&D and manufacturing processes.
Offers high specificity with the ability to treat an extremely broad range of diseases, oligonucleotides represent a promising therapeutic option in pharmaceutical research. However, their full potential is yet to be realised, as manufacturing knowledge and experience are limited outside a small number of specialist companies. Therapeutic oligonucleotides are large, complex molecules, requiring a multi-stage synthetic process alongside significant purification and analysis steps.
