Transforming Drug Discovery by Nanoscale Chemistry and Screening Enabled by Machine Learning

Nanna Therapeutics发明了一系列突破性的技术，这些技术有可能在疗效、安全性、速度和成本方面改变药物的发现方式。这可以通过为更广泛的制药行业提供广泛的发现能力和提高生产力，为英国经济提供重大推动。该项目的重点是开发突破性的集成微滴技术，以加速发现癌症、炎症性疾病和罕见疾病等许多领域的新药。目前，新药的创造是一个由几个线性部分组成的生产线式过程，所有这些都需要在进行下一个之前完成。此外，现有传统化学技术的局限性意味着该过程的输入（新分子）受到严格限制，从而限制了发现新药的机会。Nanna Therapeutics旨在彻底改造这种缓慢的线性生产线，用使用微滴的并行系统取代它，其中几乎没有输入限制，从而能够产生更便宜，我们的技术允许在微环境中制造大量类似药物的化合物，这些微珠以微小的液滴形式释放，并在广泛的测试中进行评估，这些测试超出了对细胞的疾病疗效，例如它们是否适合作为安全药物。未来，对大量可比数据的机器学习分析将有助于选择甚至预测最安全、最有效的化合物，用于治疗患者。这一优势使科学家能够利用患者的细胞启动整个药物发现过程，而不是仅仅模仿疾病的某些方面，从而提高临床试验中出现的疗法的成功率。这具有重大意义，因为它开启了为目前在经济上不可行的疾病提供快速治疗的可能性，以及快速应对新疾病威胁的可能性。通过纳入评估化合物是否安全的测试，有可能减少动物测试，并在临床测试之前增加人体安全预测。一旦建立，该技术可以用于任何需要新“材料”的地方，包括电子，纺织品，食品和农业。这种技术可以促进许多行业的发展，并加强英国作为化学工业的主导力量，为国家创造许多新的就业机会和财富。

Nanna Therapeutics has invented a ground-breaking set of technologies which has the potential to change the way in which medicines are discovered, in terms of efficacy, safety, speed and cost. This could provide the UK economy a major boost by providing vastly expanded discovery capabilities and increased productivity to the wider pharmaceutical industry. This project is focused on developing ground-breaking integrated micro-droplet technology to enable the accelerated discovery of new medicines in many areas such as cancer, inflammatory disorders as well as rare diseases. Currently, the creation of a new drug is a production line-type process made up of several linear segments, all of which need to be completed before proceeding to the next. Moreover, limits in existing traditional chemical technology mean that the inputs to the process (new molecules) are severely restricted limiting the chances to find new drugs. Nanna Therapeutics aims to completely transform this slow, linear production line, replacing it with a miniaturised parallel system using micro-droplets where there are almost no limits on the inputs, thus enabling the generation of cheaper, effective medicines for any disease.Our technology allows large numbers of drug-like compounds to be made on micro-beads and released in tiny droplets and assessed in a wide range of tests going beyond disease efficacy on cells, such as their suitability as safe drugs. Machine-learning analysis of the large volumes of comparable data will in future allow selection and even prediction of the safest and most effective compounds to progress to patients.The miniaturisation benefits allow scientists to start the whole drug discovery process using cells from patients, rather than surrogates mimicking only aspects of a disease, increasing the success of therapies emerging from clinical trials. This has significant implications, as it unlocks the possibility of providing rapid treatments to diseases, which currently would not be economically viable, as well as rapidly responding to new disease threats. By including tests to assess if a compound is safe, there is potential to reduce animal testing and increase human safety prediction prior to the clinical testing.Once established this technology can be used wherever there is a need for new ‘materials’, including electronics, textiles, food and agriculture. Such enabling technology could facilitate the growth of many industries and strengthen the UK as a leading force in the chemical industry, generating many new jobs and wealth to the country.