Poolbeg identifies new drug candidates with OneThree

Biopharmaceutical company Poolbeg Pharma has successfully identified potential new drug candidates from its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) artificial intelligence (AI) programme with OneThree Biotech, it announced on Wednesday.

The AIM-traded firm said that since initiating the collaboration in February, its scientific team had worked closely with OneThree to build a tailored AI approach that leverages its “unique” RSV human challenge trial data to identify disease-relevant biological pathways and potential drug targets.

Based on those newly-discovered drug targets, the collaboration had now identified a number of “promising” drug candidates to bring forward to lab-based validation to determine the full potential of these assets.

The company said it had prioritised compounds with existing phase 1 clinical data, and which could, if successfully validated, be repositioned as novel treatments for RSV infection.

Candidates with solid safety and pharmacodynamic data in humans were “well-positioned” to rapidly enter a clinical trial to generate early human efficacy data for RSV, the board explained.

That was in line with Poolbeg's efficient, capital light clinical development strategy that is at the core of its ambitious growth model.

“In the past few months, RSV has been sending children to hospital at alarming rates in the US and Europe,” said chief executive officer Jeremy Skillington.

“As paediatric units fill beyond capacity, and our healthcare systems contend with a 'tripledemic' of RSV, influenza and SARS-CoV-2, the need for better treatments has never been so urgent.

“We're impressed with the quality of work executed so far with OneThree leveraging their AI expertise to present new drug potential candidates from our unique human challenge trial data which Poolbeg will now optimise for further development in RSV, the only one of the three main respiratory illnesses for which there are not yet any approved vaccines and where treatment options are limited.”

At 1312 GMT, shares in Poolbeg Pharma were up 1.24% at 6.12p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.