On March 27, 2023 Immunoprecise Antibodies Ltd. (NASDAQ: IPA) ("Immunoprecise" or "IPA" or the "Company"), the parent company of BioKey and affiliate of BioStrand, reported that the EPO has issued a "Decision to Grant" for BioKey’s patent application covering the company’s HYFT Technology used to organize and analyze biological sequence information (Press release, ImmunoPrecise Antibodies, MAR 27, 2023, View Source [SID1234629379]). The HYFT Technology and methodology provide a novel way to efficiently tap into sequence information, allowing the extraction and use the relevant information therein to address the current problems in omics data integration and analysis. The HYFT Technology serves as the core of the BioStrand’s LENSai Integrated TechnologyTM platform which provides cutting-edge data solutions and antibody discovery.
Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:
Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing
Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!
The patent will provide BioStrand’s LENSai Integrated Technology with broad protection, further strengthening the Company’s patent portfolio position and enabling exclusive access to the HYFT Technology. The Company anticipates favorable outcomes in other countries as well, as many patent offices worldwide consider the status of related European cases to be highly relevant to the decision to grant patents.
"This is a significant and exciting decision by the EPO, and we view this announcement as a recognition of BioStrand’s important contributions to the fields of omic data integration and analysis, fields paramount to the future of cancer research, precision medicine, biomarker identification, and novel drug discovery and development," stated Dr. Jennifer Bath, CEO of IPA. "This patent provides protection for BioKey’s HYFT Technology, which will give scientists the ability to advance the development of safer and more effective therapies for the toughest medical challenges we face today."
The HYFT Technology
HYFT Technology is a way of organizing information about the natural world by creating connections between patterns found in living things, called HYFTs. These patterns can link genetic sequences to their structures and functions, as well as to other information such as scientific papers and medical records. The output, the HYFT knowledge graph, contains over 660 million patterns and 25 billion connections, and is continuously updated with new information. This provides a powerful tool for exploring relationships in the natural world, which can be used for research and applications in medicine and other fields. The HYFT graph is unique in its explicit representation of information from the whole biosphere, and it provides a transparent intermediate layer between sequences and predictions that allows for new knowledge to be extracted without the limitations of a black box.
HYFT-based technologies have numerous applications in various fields beyond just data integration, organization, and analysis, such as drug immunogenicity testing, drug discovery, and natural language processing (NLP). These applications have the potential to accelerate the drug development process and improve patient outcomes.
In the field of immunogenicity, HYFTs can help predict parts of a molecule that may trigger an immune response. This information is crucial in therapeutic and vaccine development, as it helps identify potential safety concerns before they become problematic. Moreover, HYFTs can predict off-target effects, which occur when a drug or therapy affects unintended targets in the body. Early identification of potential off-target effects allows researchers to design safer and more effective treatments.
In drug discovery, HYFT-based technologies have multiple potential applications, including:
Toxicity Prediction: By linking genetic sequences to toxicological data, HYFTs can predict the toxicity of potential drug candidates, helping researchers identify compounds likely to cause adverse effects before entering clinical trials.
Drug Repurposing: HYFTs can identify existing drugs for repurposing by linking genetic sequences to known targets and functions, accelerating the drug discovery process by finding compounds already approved for other indications.
Clinical Trial Design: HYFTs can optimize clinical trial design by linking genetic sequences to patient data and clinical outcomes, identifying patient subgroups more likely to benefit from specific treatments, and enabling personalized and efficient clinical trials.
Biomarker Discovery: By linking genetic sequences to disease-specific phenotypes, HYFTs can identify biomarkers of disease, helping to identify at-risk patients and enable earlier diagnosis and treatment.
Another application of HYFT-based technologies is tied to NLP, which involves analyzing and extracting information from written or spoken language. HYFTs can link text-based information, such as scientific papers or medical records, to specific genetic sequences or structures, facilitating more efficient and accurate analysis. This is particularly valuable in genomics and personalized medicine, where vast amounts of textual data must be processed and analyzed to identify potential therapies or treatments.
The Company believes that the utilization of HYFT-based technologies in drug discovery and other fields shows great promise for expediting the drug development process and enhancing patient outcomes.