The University of Strathclyde is to play a critical role in a new study investigating how AI might speed up vaccine and medicine development.

The project, led by Redcar-based drug manufacturer Micropore Technologies, aims to fast-track development processes in genomic medicine – which analyses DNA to understand an individual’s genetic makeup – with the hope of treating complex conditions, such as cancer or rare diseases, or even producing new vaccines.

The research consortium, which includes staff from the Universities of Northumbria and Teesside and has been awarded more than £440,000 by Innovate UK, will look to find new ways of encapsulating RNA in protective nanoparticles to deliver medicines to cells.  

Researchers from Strathclyde will aid in the study focusing on testing the protective lipid-based nanoparticles that are used to encapsulate ribonucleic acid (RNA) for delivery into cells.

The researchers said that this work is the most critical stage in the manufacturing process for new genomic medicines, with equipment design, operating approach, formulation and active product impacting on how these intracellular drugs behave.

According to the team, current approaches to understand these behaviours are time consuming, creating a barrier to the successful development and manufacturing of nano-delivered intracellular drugs, a problem which AI could prove critical in solving.

Professor Yvonne Perrie, head of the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, said: “This research has the potential to transform the development and manufacturing of genomic medicines.

“By applying machine learning to these intricate processes, we aim to make significant strides in how quickly and effectively treatments can be brought to patients. We’re delighted to contribute our expertise in nanoparticle testing to this collaboration.”

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The study will initially use machine learning to analyse and interpret current and existing data before creating a model that can inform the design of experiments to reduce their development costs and increase their speed.

The universities will work with Micropore to then utilise AI capabilities that could speed up the time it currently takes to go from lab scale to commercial scale, without the need to redevelop, redesign and re-optimise processes at different stages.

“We are looking forward to working with our partners to exploit machine learning to speed up the initial lab scale development and production pathway to improve the manufacturing process and ultimately bring new genomic medicines into use much more quickly than had previously been possible,” said Dave Palmer, technical manager at Micropore Technologies.