Apriori Bio, a biotechnology company based in Boston, MA, has raised $1.1 million in funding from CEPI. The funds will be used to advance Apriori Bio’s artificial intelligence platform, Octavia™.

Apriori Bio, founded in 2020 by Flagship Pioneering and led by CEO Lovisa Afzelius, specializes in innovations against viral threats. The company’s Octavia platform surveys the fitness landscape of viral variants to design new vaccines and inform public health policy by predicting the impact of emerging variants in real time.

The Octavia platform characterizes large libraries of viral variants based on their ability to bind to human cells and evade the immune response. Using machine learning, Octavia identifies mutations with the greatest ‘escape potential,’ guiding the design and updating of vaccines to protect against concerning variants for years to come.

Octavia combines computational insights and experimental biological data to build and train its algorithms. This includes analyzing evolutionary trees of viruses to pinpoint where viral variability is most likely and exploring how mutations could interact.

CEO Lovisa Afzelius commented, “We are honored to be recognized by a global leader in pandemic preparedness who shares our commitment to better protecting humanity from rapidly-evolving viruses. With CEPI’s support, we will continue advancing our Octavia platform, focusing on viruses beyond coronavirus, to ensure the global community is better prepared to effectively address future outbreaks with precision and speed.”