Raven2: AI Platform for Novel Drug Discovery
Harnessing AI to find new COVID-19 drugs.
Project Overview
Updated August 28, 2024.
The Problem
While the global spread of COVID-19 continues at a rapid pace, the discovery, testing and approval of new drugs to fight the virus takes much longer.
The first new vaccines for COVID-19 are now ready, but new drugs that treat the virus could take years. Yet, both vaccines and therapeutic drugs are needed.
How We Are Solving It
In response, a feasibility project called Raven: Rapid Repurposing of Drugs for COVID-19 began in April and concluded in July 2020. Led by Variational AI with the support of adMare BioInnovations and the Vancouver Prostate Centre (affiliated with the University of British Columbia), this follow-up Raven2 project builds on the progress of the initial study in April to discover new and novel COVID-19 drugs. The new project’s drug discovery platform is based on a completely updated version of the previous AI algorithm, but enhanced massively to discover drugs from the chemical space of all 1060 drug-like molecules and make accurate predictions on whether they could be effective drugs against COVID-19.
This extension of the original study is developing new drugs against COVID-19. The goal is to generate drug candidates that would be licensed to biopharma partners for further development and clinical trials.
The Result
Powered by Variational AI’s proprietary EnkiTM generative AI platform. the Raven2 initiative is using generative artificial intelligence to rapidly discover novel and better COVID and human coronavirus antiviral medicines. Trained on experimental and computational drug discovery data from the consortium partners, publicly available and proprietary sources, Variational AI’s EnkiTM platform is being used to generate novel and better small molecules more quickly than current methods. In January 2023, Variational AI filed two U.S. provisional patents for potential COVID-19 drugs as a direct output of the Raven2 initiative, representing a key milestone of Canadian innovation driving the applicability of generative AI to drug discovery and better health outcomes.
In August 2024, Variational AI announced the publication of two new patent applications for two lead series of chemical compositions and methods to treat coronavirus infections, demonstrating the ability of their Enki™ generative model to discover novel chemical matter in a very crowded space. The research leading to these patents was initially supported by the Raven2 project.
Project Lead
Project Partners
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"The Raven2 project has generated valuable IP that will be commercialized into oral COVID-19 antiviral pills representing a true made-in-Canada therapeutic option for Canadians and the global community. Without the Supercluster’s support, this would never have happened."
Co-Founder & CEO, Variational AI