The Covid-19 pandemic has opened the world up to global cooperation, especially when it comes to preventing the next outbreak. International agencies, healthcare experts, and even tech companies are joining hands to develop the most effective and cost-efficient ways of creating vaccines against not just Covid-19 variants but other viruses. 

So, where does NEC’s technological expertise come into the picture? The answer lies in Artificial Intelligence or AI.

A project that began over two decades ago, NEC’s AI Drug Development Division in Japan and NEC OncoImmunity (NOI) in Norway have been using machine learning and AI to help develop immunotherapy treatments for cancer patients. The concept of AI-assisted vaccine development, simply put, is about taking huge numbers of gene samples and analysing them to find common “hotspots” of cells that have developed immunity. This data is then used to help formulate a universally effective vaccine that works against the different mutations. 

Without AI, making sense of such vast amounts of information would take much longer – a luxury many patients can’t afford.

NEC OncoImmunity AS (NOI), based in Norway, consists of an experienced, multidisciplinary team of bioinformaticians, software engineers and data scientists equipped with machine-learning expertise. Their main goal: give vaccine makers a robust “antigen blueprint” that maps out the genes to focus on, saving them precious time and effort.

Since 2018, NEC has made headlines in the international cancer treatment community by teaming up with French biotechnology company Transgene to develop vaccines against tumors. The treatment is currently under trial, with very encouraging results from the first phase. 

The company also acquired Swiss–German biotech VAXIMM in March 2022 to begin surging forward with developing individualized cancer treatment in the form of a pill. 

NEC’s proven expertise in cancer treatment is now being applied to help develop the next vaccine for Covid-19 and its most threatening variants. The collaboration between NEC OncoImmunity (NOI) in Norway, NEC Laboratories Europe (NLE) in Germany and NEC’s AI Drug Development Division, promises to deliver a blueprint that can help develop a vaccine that:

This unique approach takes into account the thousands of mutations of the SARS-CoV-2. It then identifies the “base” section shared by all the mutations to tackle the virus at its core. So even if the virus mutates further, the vaccine developed based on this blueprint would still be effective. 

NEC’s filtering process also ensures that vaccine designs do not attack normal cells in the human body, but target the virus accurately. The AI does this by eliminating gene sequences that are similar to those already present in normal body tissue to prevent any adverse effects on the body’s natural immune system. 

Since the paper's publication in the open research forum bioRxiv, NEC has received seed funding of up to US$4.8m from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, on April 8, 2022. Supported by the European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) and Oslo University Hospital, the project has now entered its next stage of development, with a finished product on the horizon.