The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

DNA aptamers, small sequences of single-stranded DNA, may be used for biological sensing, cell therapies, immunotherapy, alternatives to antibodies in therapies, etc. They are small, highly stable, and once designed, they can be reproduced in unlimited exact copies. However, the process by which aptamers are designed is time-consuming and expensive (e.g. SELEX) and extensive optimisation is needed to tune their binding characteristics and improve specificity. To address these challenges, artificial intelligence (AI) methods will be developed to augment and speed up aptamer design. The Project will develop AI capabilities with broad utility across a range of cell and gene (CGT) therapy research objectives in future years of the Disruptive Technology Solutions for Cell and Gene Therapy challenge program. In the near term the Project will leverage a dataset of approximately 1000 aptamers being synthesized as candidates for a COVID-19 sensor platform, thus giving the unique opportunity to have a large impact in mitigating the impact of the COVID pandemic.