Insilico’s new COVIDomic platform combines cutting-edge AI with Intel Xeon processors and could turn the pandemic tide.

Insilico have been rather busy lately; a couple of months ago they announced a partnership with Arctoris, then Deep Longevity, their spin-out, exited stealth with an HLI collaboration, before being swiftly snapped up by Regent Pacific.

Longevity.Technology: This AI/Intel platform will leverage vast amounts of data in the search for therapies for COVID-19. However, serious diseases are life-limiting, and being able to chart and halt their progression will pay dividends for Longevity. As the reservoirs of omics data grow, the better chance we have of finding therapy solutions that will prolong both lifespan and healthspan.

Today, Insilico has announced that it is launching an AI-powered platform – COVIDomic – to support COVID-19 research worldwide. COVIDomic is a cloud-based platform that uses AI approaches and Intel architecture to identify risk factors associated with severe disease progression.

COVIDomic will be deployed for both basic and clinical research in COVID-19. A foundational technology, COVIDomic is built using massive multi-omics datasets, sophisticated dimensionality reduction algorithms and deep learning systems; this amount of computing will rely on Intel Xeon processors.

The cloud-based platform uses AI approaches to identify risk factors associated with severe disease progression. A researcher can upload wide combinations of patient data, including viral and human genomes, rich metadata (describing patient’s lifestyle, co-morbid disorders and biological age), results of blood tests; and even transcriptomic sequencing of lung fluid or nasal swabs (to identify changes in microbial communities).

As a result, the platform identifies the minimum number of relevant features that could be used to define severe disease progression for a given population.

COVIDomic will enable scientists to use anonymised patient data to integrate with a variety of existing data sets. Bioinformatics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can then be applied in many ways, starting with better stratifying of COVID-19 patients, understanding the disease trajectory, and identifying relevant disease pathways and targets.

The development team is inviting scientists globally to contribute to the development of the system and engage in active research collaborations.

“COVIDomic is an open access tool to stratify risk and severity from multimodal data sets,
including multi-omics data. Insilico Medicine’s AI-driven generative biology approach is a unique offering in the marketplace. We are part of many COVID-19 consortiums and collaborations but COVIDomic is a system that will help scientists and researchers alike to predict the severity of the disease”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “By predicting outcomes, clinicians can establish protocols and treatments we hope will reduce the severity and mortality of infection.”

“Analyzing massive amounts of data – quickly – across geographies and data sets is essential for gaining insights into how the novel coronavirus affects people across the world,” noted Rick Echevarria, Intel Vice President, Sales, Marketing, and Communications Group. “Intel computing power enables AI that can help researchers in the fight against COVID-19. We hope that by sharing our expertise, resources and technology we can help accelerate research across diverse geographies and with companies such as Insilico Medicine.”

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