Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies

Abstract Despite the large prevalence of diseases affecting cartilage (e.g. knee osteoarthritis affecting 16% of population globally), no curative treatments are available because of the limited capacity of drugs to localise in such tissue caused by low vascularisation and electrostatic repulsion. W...

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Main Authors: Stefano Perni, Polina Prokopovich
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2022-08-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18332-3
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author Stefano Perni
Polina Prokopovich
author_facet Stefano Perni
Polina Prokopovich
author_sort Stefano Perni
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Despite the large prevalence of diseases affecting cartilage (e.g. knee osteoarthritis affecting 16% of population globally), no curative treatments are available because of the limited capacity of drugs to localise in such tissue caused by low vascularisation and electrostatic repulsion. While an effective delivery system is sought, the only option is using high drug doses that can lead to systemic side effects. We introduced poly-beta-amino-esters (PBAEs) to effectively deliver drugs into cartilage tissues. PBAEs are copolymer of amines and di-acrylates further end-capped with other amine; therefore encompassing a very large research space for the identification of optimal candidates. In order to accelerate the screening of all possible PBAEs, the results of a small pool of polymers (n = 90) were used to train a variety of machine learning (ML) methods using only polymers properties available in public libraries or estimated from the chemical structure. Bagged multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) returned the best predictive performance and was used on the remaining (n = 3915) possible PBAEs resulting in the recognition of pivotal features; a further round of screening was carried out on PBAEs (n = 150) with small variations of structure of the main candidates from the first round. The refinements of such characteristics enabled the identification of a leading candidate predicted to improve drug uptake > 20 folds over conventional clinical treatment; this uptake improvement was also experimentally confirmed. This work highlights the potential of ML to accelerate biomaterials development by efficiently extracting information from a limited experimental dataset thus allowing patients to benefit earlier from a new technology and at a lower price. Such roadmap could also be applied for other drug/materials development where optimisation would normally be approached through combinatorial chemistry.
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spelling doaj.art-6c1a1b9e75e54666aa2ffdb6eb44faa32022-12-22T02:34:40ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222022-08-0112111210.1038/s41598-022-18332-3Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapiesStefano Perni0Polina Prokopovich1School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cardiff UniversitySchool of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cardiff UniversityAbstract Despite the large prevalence of diseases affecting cartilage (e.g. knee osteoarthritis affecting 16% of population globally), no curative treatments are available because of the limited capacity of drugs to localise in such tissue caused by low vascularisation and electrostatic repulsion. While an effective delivery system is sought, the only option is using high drug doses that can lead to systemic side effects. We introduced poly-beta-amino-esters (PBAEs) to effectively deliver drugs into cartilage tissues. PBAEs are copolymer of amines and di-acrylates further end-capped with other amine; therefore encompassing a very large research space for the identification of optimal candidates. In order to accelerate the screening of all possible PBAEs, the results of a small pool of polymers (n = 90) were used to train a variety of machine learning (ML) methods using only polymers properties available in public libraries or estimated from the chemical structure. Bagged multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) returned the best predictive performance and was used on the remaining (n = 3915) possible PBAEs resulting in the recognition of pivotal features; a further round of screening was carried out on PBAEs (n = 150) with small variations of structure of the main candidates from the first round. The refinements of such characteristics enabled the identification of a leading candidate predicted to improve drug uptake > 20 folds over conventional clinical treatment; this uptake improvement was also experimentally confirmed. This work highlights the potential of ML to accelerate biomaterials development by efficiently extracting information from a limited experimental dataset thus allowing patients to benefit earlier from a new technology and at a lower price. Such roadmap could also be applied for other drug/materials development where optimisation would normally be approached through combinatorial chemistry.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18332-3
spellingShingle Stefano Perni
Polina Prokopovich
Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
Scientific Reports
title Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
title_full Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
title_fullStr Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
title_full_unstemmed Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
title_short Feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly-beta-amino-esters for cartilage therapies
title_sort feasibility and application of machine learning enabled fast screening of poly beta amino esters for cartilage therapies
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18332-3
work_keys_str_mv AT stefanoperni feasibilityandapplicationofmachinelearningenabledfastscreeningofpolybetaaminoestersforcartilagetherapies
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