Intellegens, a company applying machine learning (ML) to accelerate R&D, has secured a £1.6 million grant from Innovate UK to apply ML in the emerging field of oligonucleotide therapies. 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 optimization of quality control strategies.

Support for the project is being provided with input from six research organizations, including top pharma companies, such as Novartis and specialist biotech companies, such as Silence Therapeutics. 

Oligonucleotides represent a promising therapeutic option in pharmaceutical research, offering high specificity with the ability to treat a broad range of diseases. However, manufacturing knowledge and experience with oligonucleotides are limited. Therapeutic oligonucleotides are large, complex molecules, requiring a multi-stage synthetic process and significant purification and analysis.

Intellegens’ Alchemite is a set of advanced ML artificial intelligence algorithms and tools that supports the design and development of chemicals, materials, formulations, and processes. The tool has been applied to process and other optimization challenges, including modelling small-molecule drug pharmacokinetics and developing novel additive manufacturing processes with collaborators. The goal is accelerated time to market and increased manufacturing efficiency.

The collaboration aims to 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 optimization of quality control strategies and process parameters. The project has been granted access to CPI Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC), providing expertise and state-of-the-art facilities for the duration of the collaboration.

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 lifesaving and life-changing technology.”