New AI tool could help predict viral outbreaks

EVEscape’s underlying framework combines a deep-learning model of evolutionary viral sequences with detailed biological and structural information about the virus. Crucially, the model can anticipate new viral variants before they emerge, solely using information available at the start of an outbreak. Therefore, anticipating viral variants that avoid immune detection with sufficient lead time is key to developing optimal vaccines and therapeutics – and this is what EVEscape would enable us to do. The research team originally developed EVE to predict the effects of genetic mutations on human disease risk, e.g. In a previous study, EVE proved extremely accurate in predicting disease-causing mutations in humans, with comparable performance to experimental methods.