PRESS RELEASE

The University of the Philippines (UP) is harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve studies on vaccines against African swine fever (ASF).

“By equipping policymakers, farmers and environmentalists with AI-driven tools, UP is helping to build a more resilient and sustainable food system for the Philippines,” UP said in a statement on Thursday.

AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence by machines and computer systems for, among others, faster problem-solving and decision-making.

Homer Pantua, president of biotechnology firm BioAssets Corp., said machine learning, a subfield of AI, can boost the ability to study viruses such as ASF to prevent the spread of viral diseases or outbreaks.

Careful analysis

He said machine learning enabled them to analyze the evolution of ASF, which has dramatically reduced the country’s hog population since the first outbreak in 2019, thus jacking up pork prices.

“We propose that machine learning-guided applications can help support vaccine research and also help in making careful analyses of the virus’ origin and evolution,” said Pantua, also an adjunct faculty of the UP Los Baños’ Institute of Biological Sciences, during the AI Horizons PH ’24: Conference on AI-Powered Research and Innovation held in Taguig City.

“From a vaccine development-centric point of view, we can use machine learning to generate data that will guide in identifying some vaccine candidate,” he added.

Aside from the absence of widely accepted, safe and effective vaccines, Pantua identified other gaps in the ASF research: optimized and harmonized protocols for sample collection, whole genome sequences (the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism) for further studies and discovery and evolutionary analyses.