����VR��Ƶ

In June 2022, a South Korea-based developer, SK bioscience, received licensure for its COVID-19 vaccine SKYCovione™. It was made in partnership with the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, with funding from ����VR��Ƶ.

What was truly unique about this vaccine was that it was the first computationally designed medical product to be approved anywhere in the world, for any disease. Put simply, it was the first authorized vaccine to be developed using artificial intelligence (AI). 

Other AI systems, like Google Deepmind’s AlphaFold, can predict a protein's 3D structure from its amino acid sequence. That has revolutionised the field of structural biology, so much so that it won a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

Uptake and application of such generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content based on learned patterns from existing data, has been rapid. Its application is converging in ways that could also revolutionise the way we treat or even prevent illness – from drug discovery and development to disease detection and prediction. In the realm of pandemic preparedness, the implications of this technology could be game changing: fuelling the advances and time-savings needed to propel the world toward being ready to execute the 100 Days Mission: a goal to develop vaccines against viral threats with pandemic potential within 100 days of identification.

The Pandemic Preparedness Engine

����VR��Ƶ is leading the way in harnessing AI, working with research institutions and vaccine scientists around the world to combine these AI advances with its vast repository of scientific data to create the world’s first AI platform dedicated to pandemic preparedness: the Pandemic Preparedness Engine. “This Engine will power a revolution in the way outbreak vaccines are developed and produced,” explained Dr Andrew Hebbeler, Director of Biosecurity at ����VR��Ƶ. “It will act like a kind of ChatGPT for vaccine developers, serving as a virtual scientific collaborator capable of helping researchers identify and synthesise mind-boggling swathes of information, test hypotheses and advance vaccine development at unprecedented speed. With the help of the Pandemic Preparedness Engine, what takes developers months or years to achieve could be done in days or even hours.” 

The Engine will be able to contribute to and enhance key stages of the vaccine development process, from monitoring of epidemiological and surveillance data and identifying potential vaccine targets against emerging viral threats to supporting development of clinical trial designs based on wide-ranging modelling, preclinical, clinical and safety data.

Securing the Engine

The benefits and opportunities that the Pandemic Preparedness Engine offer are tremendous. But ����VR��Ƶ is also acutely aware of the new and evolving biosecurity risks that AI can pose. “Top of mind for many biosecurity experts is the fact that the same AI tools that can be used to design life-saving vaccines could also be misused to cause harm”, Hebbeler said. “That’s why ����VR��Ƶ and its partners have been taking a biosecurity-by-design approach—considering biosecurity risks from the very start of the programme and building in robust mitigations as the Pandemic Preparedness Engine concept and capabilities are being refined and tested. We’re aiming to produce an Engine with multiple layers of defense – from protecting biosecurity-sensitive data needed to train the AI within the Pandemic Preparedness Engine to carefully managing who has access to the Engine and its capabilities and how they use it.” 

Managing access to this powerful AI tool is critical and will need to balance ����VR��Ƶ’s commitment to openness and equitable access with responsible use, security and protection to avoid exploitation by bad actors of this vital resource.

To achieve these aims, ����VR��Ƶ and US-based philanthropy are partnering to design the rules of the road for use of, and access to, the Pandemic Preparedness Engine. Importantly, this work is being done before the Engine is operational and the partnership will also continue to probe, simulate and identify possible ways in which the Engine could be misused, so that we can mitigate against potential risks.

Ultimately, the biosecurity mitigations ����VR��Ƶ builds into the Pandemic Preparedness Engine will contribute to global norms and best practices for the development and use of sophisticated AI-based biological design systems. “Sentinel Bio and ����VR��Ƶ have a shared vision of creating a world free from the threat posed by pandemics. The rapidly-evolving capabilities of AI could help humanity make huge advances towards this goal, but this novel technology must be applied safely and responsibly”, said Claire Qureshi, CEO of Sentinel Bio. “As the development of ����VR��Ƶ’s Pandemic Preparedness Engine moves forward, our partnership will embed biosecurity measures throughout, maximizing the benefits of this emerging technology while ensuring it can be used safely to combat emerging viral threats.”