KRAKÓW, Poland, September 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Ardigen, a company applying Artificial Intelligence to Precision Medicine, has signed a grant agreement with the National Centre for Research and Development for the funding of a novel technology that will revolutionize the development of TCR-based therapies in immuno-oncology.
The company will harness AI for the design of T-cell receptors that cannot be reached by the laboratory methods currently in use. The created technology will reduce the time needed for discovery and optimization of TCRs; it will also limit the number of required laboratory experiments and decrease R&D costs.
The total value of the project will be $5.4M USD. The project entails building a unique database of TCRs with matching targets, as well as producing and experimentally validating newly-designed TCRs. Ardigen implements feedback cycles between laboratory and AI, that improve the accuracy of the solution and reduce the number of necessary experiments with each use of the platform.
“We are looking forward to advancing global immunotherapy pipelines with our breakthrough AI-powered technology. TCR-based therapies bring hope of effective treatments, especially in solid tumors” , said Janusz Homa, CEO of Ardigen.
Piotr Stępniak, Immunology Director at Ardigen, adds: “TCR discovery used to consume years and countless laboratory experiments with a lot of dead ends and clinical surprises. Our goal is to use AI to access the potential of TCR sequences without being limited to only those available within laboratory screening libraries”.
Ardigen has already created a neoantigen prediction platform called “ArdImmune Vax” that employs state-of-the art bioinformatics and Artificial Intelligence to identify optimal sets of neoantigens as targets for cancer vaccines and adoptive cell therapies. The next step for the company is to transform the development of T-cell receptors that target neoantigens for effective and safe adoptive cell therapies.
Expert Contribution
Reviewed by: Dr. Maciej Jasiński, PhD
Role: Director of Biologics, AI‑Driven Drug Discovery
Expertise: AI-driven biologics discovery, machine learning, structural bioinformatics, computational biology, peptide and protein binder design, HLA peptide prediction, cross-functional team leadership
