AI-Accelerated Biosensor Design

Oceanit proposes to leverage AI technologies to accelerate and improve the development of aptamer-based biosensors that specifically bind to biomolecular structures. Aptamers are short single-stranded nucleic acid sequences that bind to three-dimensional biomolecular structures in a way similar to antibodies. Aptamers however have several advantages as compared to antibodies, including long shelf-life, stability at room temperature, low/no immunogenicity, and low-cost. While methods like SELEX can test many sequences simultaneously (~10^15), they often fail to produce usable aptamers.  Computational approaches have also shown promise for identifying aptamers, but the cost of simulation makes “brute force” searches infeasible.  Oceanit overcomes this issue by using in vitro data to power artificial intelligence that in turn is used to improve the SELEX process and outcomes.