Evaxion Biotech Showcases Enhanced AI-Immunology™ Capabilities at ISMB 2024

Evaxion Biotech A/S (NASDAQ: EVAX), a clinical-stage TechBio company, has presented significant advancements in its AI-Immunology™ platform, specifically focusing on the improved performance of its EvaxMHC component. This announcement was made at the 32nd Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference held in Montreal, Canada, from July 12-16, 2024.

Key advancements presented include:

• Utilization of a state-of-the-art deep-learning framework to enhance the accuracy of peptide-MHC predictions.
• Implementation of three new strategies: a unified representation for MHC class I and II molecules, a deep transformer encoder-decoder architecture, and a generative adversarial network (GAN) pretraining mechanism.
• Improved vaccine designs demonstrated in preclinical studies.

AI-Immunology™ is an advanced artificial intelligence technology platform designed for vaccine discovery targeting infectious diseases and cancers. By integrating proprietary AI models such as PIONEER™, EDEN™, RAVEN™, and ObsERV™, the platform can model the complexity of the immune system. AI-Immunology™'s computational modeling capabilities allow for swift and accurate identification, prediction, and design of vaccine candidates, offering a comprehensive and personalized approach to combating fast-evolving pathogens and malignant cells.

See also: 10 Companies Applying AI for Biologics Discovery 

EvaxMHC plays a critical role in the development of AI-designed personalized and precision vaccines by accurately predicting which peptides of pathogens or cancer cells are displayed by Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules on cell surfaces. This process is crucial for enabling the immune system to recognize and attack these threats. The improved EvaxMHC predicts peptide presentation by MHC molecules more accurately, thus enhancing vaccine target discovery and aiding in the creation of effective vaccines.

Christian Kanstrup, CEO of Evaxion, highlighted the significance of these improvements:

“Our results demonstrate significant advancements in predicting peptide-MHC interactions, especially for MHC class II molecules, which have historically been challenging to predict accurately. With this progress in AI-Immunology™, we have a more reliable and effective tool for designing personalized and precision vaccines for both cancer and infectious diseases. The enhanced EvaxMHC is currently being utilized in the ongoing Phase 2 trial of our lead vaccine candidate, the personal cancer vaccine EVX-01.”