Poolbeg Pharma announced a significant breakthrough in its world first influenza Artificial Intelligence ('AI') Programme with CytoReason. Poolbeg has been working with CytoReason since March 2022. Poolbeg's unique disease progression data from influenza human challenge trials combined with CytoReason's broad repository of curated disease data were analysed using CytoReason's AI-led platform.

The analysis has led to the discovery of multiple novel drug targets for the treatment of influenza. Identification of drug targets from this unique data-set has previously been successful as p38 MAP Kinase, inhibited by POLB 001, was identified as a driver of severe influenza but this required manual analysis that took several years. However, through the utilisation of CytoReason's cutting-edge AI technology, Poolbeg has now identified multiple novel drug targets in just 15 months.

Moreover, CytoReason's analysis independently confirmed the significance of the p38 MAP kinase pathway in influenza, providing further validation for Poolbeg's POLB 001 programme. The Company is actively exploring the most effective way to further develop the novel drug targets in order to generate value and looks forward to updating shareholders about the progress of this programme in due course. This marks Poolbeg's second successful AI Programme, following the identification of potential new drug candidates for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) announced in December 2022.