AI has designed candidate drugs for antibiotic-resistant infections and genetic diseases. But efforts to incorporate AI into the design of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the revolutionary delivery vehicles behind mRNA therapies like the COVID-19 vaccines, have been much more limited.
Designing LNPs is especially challenging: Each formulation combines multiple lipid components whose ratios influence how the particle delivers genetic instructions inside cells. Scientists still lack a clear map connecting those chemical inputs to biological outcomes.
The reason? There simply isn’t enough data.
Now, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have built LIBRIS, an automated microfluidic platform capable of generating LNP formulations at the speed and scale…