The world's first vaccine developed by artificial intelligence has successfully passed initial clinical trials in humans, reports infohub.kz.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge tested the universal vaccine on 39 volunteers. The drug, created by AI algorithms, is designed to protect against sarbecoviruses — a subfamily of coronaviruses that includes the pathogens causing COVID-19 and SARS.
The results of the first clinical trials were published in the Journal of Infection. Scientists from the University of Cambridge, together with the company DIOSynVax, used artificial intelligence to analyze the genomes of multiple coronaviruses. Based on the data, algorithms designed a universal superantigen that recognizes common vulnerable sites on viral proteins.
The resulting drug is intended to protect against the SARS virus, the SARS-CoV-2 strain that causes COVID-19, and other sarbecoviruses. The clinical trial involved 39 healthy volunteers. The drug was administered using the PharmaJet Tropis needle-free injector, which delivers active ingredients via narrow liquid jets.
The trials confirmed the vaccine's safety and good tolerability. Independent experts Monica Gandhi from the University of California, San Francisco, and Mark Bubnovski from Novo Nordisk emphasized that the algorithms will not protect against unknown pathogen families but will accelerate vaccine development against closely related strains.