In July 2024 CEPI announced an award of US $1.1 million to support Apriori Bio in advancing its biology-informed artificial intelligence platform Octavia. Octavia is intended to protect humanity against rapidly evolving viruses through the design of variant-resilient vaccines. The seed funding will focus on pandemic influenza strain H3N2, which has already affected pigs, birds, and humans. This work comes from within CEPI’s biosecurity department, established to reduce biosafety and biosecurity risks associated with CEPI research investments and accelerate responsible AI for vaccine development.
The Octavia platform
Apriori introduces Octavia as a biology-enabled AI platform that creates landscape maps of existing and potential variants of a virus based on their ability to bind human cells and evade antibodies. These maps enable the creation of an “antibody repertoire” to “fill gaps in our defences with new vaccines”. The platform is designed “from the bottom-up” to “seamlessly integrate experimental insights and artificial intelligence”. Octavia uses several enabling technologies, such as protein display systems, deep mutational scanning, single-cell sorting, and deep sequencing.
The goal of the platform is to make the “vision” of a vaccine to protect against variants that will emerge in the future a reality. This would inform a public health policy based on an “accurate understanding” of how medical countermeasures and natural immunity interact with existing, emerging, and potential variants of concern.
Precision and speed for preparedness
Dr In-Kyu Yoon, Acting Executive Director of Vaccine R&D at CEPI, reflected that the world was “brought to its knees” by the “devastating” COVID-19 pandemic, in which “fast-emerging variants like Omicron outsmarted our medical defences, so we had to constantly play catch-up”.
“To avoid being in this vulnerable position again, we need to shift our global mindset to one of preparedness. By focusing on the range of potential deadly viral variants that could emerge from deadly pathogens ahead of time, we could seriously speed up our response to a future outbreak.”
Dr Lovisa Afzelius, Co-founder and CEO of Apriori, is “honoured to be recognised by a global leader in pandemic preparedness”. The two organisations share a “commitment to better protecting humanity from rapidly-evolving viruses”.
“With CEPI’s support we will continue advancing our Octavia platform, focusing on viruses beyond coronavirus, to ensure the global community is better prepared to effectively address future outbreaks with precision and speed.”
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