Intellegens and Optibrium celebrate joint success for their neural network algorithm that can predict new antimalarial compounds.
The increasing resistance to antimalarial medications means there is an urgency to develop new treatments. However, progress has been slow due to a lack of research in the field; indeed malaria is now considered a neglected tropical disease according to the World Health Organisation.
Open Source Malaria (OSM) is a global initiative, founded by Professor Matthew Todd of UCL, whose ultimate goal is to identify new antimalarial compounds. In the last six years, OSM has put together an international team of researchers to design and test new candidates to tackle Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of all the malaria-causing parasites. The most recent phase of the initiative involved a competition to develop a computational model that could predict which molecules would most effectively target the parasite.
Optibrium, a leading provider of software for the drug discovery industry, responded to the challenge by collaborating with the AI start-up, Intelligens. Optibrium harnessed Intellegens’ predictive modelling platform, Alchemite, to produce significant improvements in the accuracy of their predictions. This resulted in an algorithm that could outperform conventional models, thus reducing research and development costs for the industry.
The model was one of four that were selected by the judges to progress to the next phase of the initiative, which will involve the synthesis of molecules and testing against the malaria parasite.
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