“The computational design platform is sophisticated and ambitious, but the paper does not let us judge whether the AI algorithm itself is exceptionally advanced compared with other state-of-the-art antigen-design methods,” Boubnovski told MNT.
“It’s not ‘pure AI’ in the sense of a system that designs a vaccine end-to-end by itself. It’s more like computer-aided engineering for vaccines,” he explained.
“The researchers used computational biology to compare related coronaviruses, identify conserved parts of the spike receptor-binding domain, and design a synthetic antigen intended to focus the immune system on shared weak spots across that virus family,” he continued.
“The computer helps generate and prioritize candidates, but biology still gets the final vote through lab testing, animal studies, and human clinical trials,” he added.
The intellectual property for the vaccine is owned by DIOSynVax Ltd, University of Regensburg, and Cambridge Enterprise Ltd.