mRNA Lightning™

Discovery of small molecule mRNA drugs and novel mRNA biology targets

Born from TranslationLight, our breakthrough patented technology that lighted up the world of mRNA translation more than a decade ago, we've continued to innovate and lead the field of mRNA visualization technology. mRNA Lightning 2.0 added TranscriptLight, the ability to visualize mRNA transcripts, along with dozens of mRNA MOA assays and MOAi, our AI-driven mechanism of action identification technology. Now, mRNA Lightning 3.0 integrates AI with biology across the whole platform along with our tera-scale automated lab. PathwayLight is a new imaging technology that enables a full-spectrum molecular pathway visualization and disease-specific library design that will be optimized to affect a specific pathway. With this imaging technology, we created the mRNA Image Neural Network to recognize and elucidate disease signatures, mRNA pathways that underly specific diseases. The mRNA Biology LLM and the Lightning AI co-pilot now capture and use the vast knowledge that we have accumulated in over a decade of research in mRNA biology and take our ability to uncover mechanisms of action and novel targets to a whole new level, mRNA Lightning 3.0 is a new paradigm in decoding mRNA biology for disease understanding and discovery of mRNA drugs and novel mRNA biology targets.

Anima's Platform Evolution

1.0

Translation Light

Dozens of mRNA
MOA assays

2.0

TranscriptLight

mRNA biology lab
Tera-scale operations

3.0

PathwayLight

AI-driven MOA
elucidation

mRNA Image
Neural Network

mRNA Lightning
AI co-pilot

disease-specific
library design

mRNA AI technologies

mRNA Biology
LLM

Anima's mRNA Lightning Imaging Technologies

mRNA AI Technologies

mRNA Biology Technologies

mRNA biology lab
Tera-scale automation

TranslationLight

PathwayLight

TranscriptLight

Dozens of mRNA
MOA assays

mRNA Image
Neural Network

mRNA Lightning
AI co-pilot

AI-driven
MOA elucidation

mRNA
Biology LLM

mRNA Biology Lab

Tera-scale Automation

Our “tera-scale” mRNA biology lab is a next-generation, fully automated lab for high-content screening of large small molecule libraries and the execution of dozens of MOA studies of compounds in live biology, integrated with mRNA imaging. Using screen-to-cloud architecture, the lab easily scales to run the largest screening projects.

mRNA imaging technologies

At the core of Anima’s platform are our proprietary technologies for the visualization of individual mRNAs' life cycle in cells:

TranslationLight

Visualize mRNA translation

TranslationLight is a patented technology licensed from UPENN using labeled tRNA pairs to visualize mRNA translation with light pulses emitted from ribosomes.

mRNA imaging technologies

At the core of Anima's platform are our proprietary technologies for the visualization of individual mRNAs' life cycles in cells:

PathwayLight

mRNA biology pathway visualizers

PathwayLight visually differentiates the many regulatory pathways of mRNA biology such as splicing, localization, RBPs, and mRNA modifications, and selects the mRNA disease signature, the disease pathway underlying a specific disease that would become the target in a screening campaign for compounds that modulate mRNA biology to affect disease phenotype.

Disease-specific mRNA biology images dataset

mRNA biology disease signature

Pathway Decoded

Lung Fibrosis

Solid Tumors

Alzheimer's

Neuroblastoma

mRNA imaging technologies

At the core of Anima's platform are our proprietary technologies for visualization of individual mRNAs' life cycles in cells:

TranscriptLight

Visualize mRNA transcripts

With TranscriptLight, we are able to visualize individual or multiple mRNA transcripts across their life cycles.

mRNA MOA assays

Dozens of assays developed by Anima allow us to analyze the activity of compounds and their effect on mRNA regulatory pathways to determine their mode of action.

mRNA Image Neural Network

The mRNA Image Network is a neural network trained with over 2 billion images, the world’s largest dataset of mRNA biology images that were generated by our proprietary mRNA imaging technologies using disease model cells. By seeing millions of images of healthy and diseased cells, the network learns the mRNA regulatory pathways underlying a given disease, visually identifying a “disease mRNA signature” that sets them apart. The mRNA Image Network analyzes the millions of images generated in our high-content screening and identifies small molecule drugs that modulate the selected signature pathway. These active compounds change the image toward the signature seen in healthy cells.

mRNA Image network training for mRNA biology disease signature identification

Diseased
Phenotype

mRNA Biology
Visualizers

Healthy
Phenotype

mRNA Lightning AI co-pilot

The mRNA biology LLM is accessible through the mRNA Lightning co-pilot chatbot that works hand in hand with our biologists to decide on experiments to execute to determine the mode of action of compounds and their molecular targets.

AI-driven MOA elucidation

After identifying a disease's mRNA biology signature, we employ MOAi to discover and validate novel targets. Compounds from our high content screening emerge with pre-existing MOA rationale as they have shown activity on the discovered disease signature pathway. Leveraging our vast proprietary data of mRNA biology, the mRNA biology LLM, through the AI co-pilot suggests hypotheses along with confirmatory experiments. Our biologists interact with the system in an iterative process that rapidly converges to identify the MOA and molecular targets of active compounds.

mRNA biology LLM MOA recognition

Ribosome accessory proteins

Epitranscriptomics
(mRNA modifying proteins)

Splicing factors

Modifiers of ribosomal proteins (Kinases, methylases etc...)

tRNA abundance

RNA binding proteins

mRNA Lightning co-pilot ML-guided experiments design

mRNA biology LLM with MOAi

Our vast knowledge of mRNA biology, regulatory pathways, and mechanisms of action, along with actual experimental results is used in a large language model that was augmented with mRNA biology knowledge and works iteratively throughout the Lightning system in a discovery project.