VeriSIM Life Secures a Federal Grant to Create a Drug Combinatorial Platform Against COVID-19

Small Business Innovation Research Program Provides Seed Funding for R&D

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VeriSIM Life has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $255,908 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on rapid repurposing and translation of approved and investigational drugs for COVID-19 using its patented artificial intelligence (AI) driven biosimulation platform, BIOiSIM.

VeriSIM Life has developed a whole-body biosimulation platform driven by AI and machine learning (ML), that accurately predicts the clinical efficacy of new drugs before human trials. We are delivering strategic insights from our platform to translate, scale, and accelerate drug development to advance human health. With support from NSF, we will be working toward our mission and addressing the rapid escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic by optimizing combinations and dosing strategies of FDA approved drugs as a repurposed, multi-targeted approach against COVID-19. Vaccination and single therapies continue to scale around the world but we strongly believe our approach has a stronger potential to be more efficacious than a single drug target due to the multifactored-polygenic infectious nature of the virus, and the new variants that are emerging rapidly around the globe. The SBIR grant will help us continue to expand the capabilities of our biosimulation platform, to enable successful selection and deployment of drug combinations in a variety of diseases and conditions that are either rare or have the potential to be epidemic in nature.

“NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, Division Director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”

“We are proud to have received the NSF-SBIR grant and look forward to continuing to successfully predict complex, ideal drug combinations to assess drug efficacy and toxicity in treating COVID-19. Leveraging the BIOiSIM to identify and deliver multi-targeted therapies for the treatment of COVID-19, is one of the many ways we are looking to advance drug development in partnership with pharma and biotech companies," said Dr. Jo Varshney, CEO and Founder of VeriSIM Life.

"In addition, a lesson from this pandemic is that it won’t be the last and we have the opportunity to leverage BIOiSIM to create a scalable pandemic readiness platform that researchers can use for faster, accurate, and efficacious predictions,” Continued Varshney.

“The availability of a well-informed platform to de-risk the library of potential repurposed drugs for their utility to treat and/or manage new infectious diseases is a game-changer for pandemic readiness. It should also permit pressure-testing of drug combinations for an earlier assessment of whether they align with the presumed therapeutic window of target patient populations,” said Dr. Jeff Barrett, Senior Advisor, Critical Path Institute; Former Chair, FDA Advisory Committee.

The Phase I SBIR/STTR grant also awards VeriSIM Life with eligibility to apply for a Phase II (up to $1,000,000) grant. The applications of the BIOiSIM platform are indefinite and in the coming weeks we will participate in various NSF events and workshops to demonstrate our platform and work towards our goal. To learn more about our approach, solutions, and how we can partner - contact us at: [e-mail].

About VeriSIM Life: VeriSIM Life is redefining the approach to preclinical and clinical drug development with a platform that delivers whole-body simulations and predicts the clinical efficacy of drugs before human trials. Our approach model is built to accurately translate, scale, and accelerate development; derisking R&D decisions and enabling pharmaceutical and biotech organizations with the insights to propel innovation forward. With our first-in-class, proprietary AI-enabled platform our team of scientists, modelers, chemists, and software engineers are your partners on a mission to advance human health.

About Critical Path Institute: Critical Path Institute (C-Path) is a nonprofit, public-private partnership with the FDA created under the auspices of the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative program in 2005. C-Path orchestrates the development of drug development tools through an innovative, collaborative approach to the sharing of data and expertise, and accelerates the pace and reduces the costs of medical product development by building consensus among the participating institutions.

About the National Science Foundation's Small Business Programs: The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.5 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering to startups as small business innovation research (SBIR) programs.