NEXTCAST

Description of the granted funding

Safety assessment of chemicals is of vital importance for ensuring economic growth and development while preserving human health and the environment. Current methods are either too slow and expensive or inaccurate, or both. Imminent changes in EU legislation may soon push the market towards innovative ways of achieving safety prediction of chemicals. More importantly, all the existing predictive toxicology methods are limited to small molecules, neglecting new type of chemicals and drugs, such as the engineered nanomaterials and biotherapeutics. In the last years we have developed computational methods and software that is able to achieve unprecedented accuracy in predicting the safety of any exposure while providing also vital information on their molecular mechanism of action (the way the exposure interacts with the biological systems at a molecular level). Our method allows robust and accurate prediction of safety while helping the industries to design better chemicals and drugs. Here we propose the commercialisation of our software solution based on artificial intelligence. We also propose to conduct key case studies in partnership with industrial partners in Finland and abroad. Our target market will primarily address the needs of chemical industries developing new nanomaterials and pharmaceutical companies developing biopharmaceuticals in Finland and the rest of Europe. Collaboration with regulatory bodies in EU further ensures wide acceptance of our methods, potentially expanding our market in the next future.
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Starting year

2018

End year

2021

Granted funding

383 000 €

Contact person

Soili Pakarinen

Funder

Innovaatiorahoituskeskus Business Finland

Funding instrument

New knowledge and business from research ideas

Other information

Funding decision number

1514/31/2018

Identified topics

welfare, well being