BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) and InstaDeep Ltd have confirmed a multi-year joint venture aimed at developing new immunotherapies for a variety of cancers and infectious diseases by applying the latest innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
BioNTech and InstaDeep will form a joint AI Innovation Lab in London, UK, and Mainz, Germany as part of the partnership, to advance a portfolio of drug discovery and design, protein engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain optimization projects. The AI Innovation Lab will combine the advanced capabilities of InstaDeep through the use of AI, ML, and digitalization with the deep domain expertise of BioNTech in precise immunotherapy and its access to a broad range of internal and external datasets. The advancement of next-generation vaccines and biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of cancer and the prevention and therapy of infectious diseases, including Covid-19, will be one of the key research areas of the joint BioNTech-InstaDeep Innovation Lab.
Three core areas will be the focus of this strategic collaboration:
First is novel drug design: BioNTech is progressing a pipeline of novel mRNA-based vaccines and therapeutics and will use the DeepChainTM protein design platform from InstaDeep to develop new mRNA sequences for protein targets, including its RiboMabTM and RiboCytokineTM platforms that use messenger RNA to in vivo encode antibodies and cytokines.
Then comes advanced analytics: By using machine learning and edge analytics to identify novel biological targets and predictive biomarkers, BioNTech and InstaDeep plan to generate insights from public and proprietary meta datasets, as well as anonymized patient data.
And the last is manufacturing and supply chain optimization: To further optimize manufacturing and supply chain processes, BioNTech plans to use AI and ML applications. BioNTech aims to deliver greater efficiencies in drug manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain processes by employing the latest advances in robotics and autonomous decision-making algorithms.
The long-term collaborative effort builds on the existing connection that was started in 2019 between InstaDeep and BioNTech. InstaDeep has its headquarters in London and was recently nominated as one of the world’s 100 most promising AI start-ups by CB Insights.
