RIYADH: Saudi-based biotechnology company NanoPalm is developing a biorobot using a unique blend of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and gene therapy to find a solution for patients with sickle cell disease.

Affecting approximately 20 million people worldwide, sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disorder in which red blood cells are crescent shaped and rigid. Patients with sickle cell experience blocked blood vessels, pain, fatigue, and anemia, impacting their well-being.

Founded in 2022, and headquartered in Riyadh, NanoPalm began life at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) before it was incubated by the NextEra initiative.

The biotechnology company is run by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in partnership with The Garage — once a car park, now a 28,000-square-meter space that can accommodate 300 startups.

Ali Al-Hasan and Samar Al-Sudir, the founders of NanoPalm, have used their expertise to develop a product that goes beyond treating the symptoms of sickle cell. Their aim is to remove the gene from a patient’s body altogether.

With Al-Hasan’s knowledge of nanomedicine and Al-Sudir’s background in chemistry, the pair were able to bring their combined expertise to bear.

The NanoPalm team spent more than a year collecting data to feed into artificial intelligence models, Al-Hasan told Arab News.

“We explored AI and we found it was a long journey where we needed to create our own data and generate the data that will be used to train AI models,” he said.

“It will predict the best gene therapy and predict its safety, its effectiveness, and cut down the duration of the therapy, while making it affordable.

“Discovery is at the heart of any drug development process in any pharma company. Now it has become digitized and AI enabled.”

In the development of their product, NanoPalm uses three technologies: AI to model and predict, nanotechnology to create the medicine, and gene therapy to edit genetic material.

“We use the manufacturing recipe from the AI and then go to the lab to build a lipid biorobot,” said Al-Hasan.

“It’s like a vehicle. And those lipid biorobots encapsulate genetic materials such as mRNA and other RNA molecules, which act like scissors to remove the gene that we want to remove.

“When patients come to the clinic, they usually get an IV infusion of biorobots encapsulating genetic materials for four hours and then go home. The biorobots will then navigate their body and find where the disease is. They go after cells responsible for sickle cell.”

NanoPalm has set out to revolutionize the biotech industry. Al-Hasan said the company’s mission is to make treatment more cost-effective.

“As we dove into this problem, we found two important facts,” he said. “Sickle cell disease is not the only genetic disease. There are 6,000 other genetic diseases that have no known cures.

“The second problem is that the current gene therapies are ineffective. They are super expensive. The patients would have to be rich to afford gene therapies, for example, because sickle cell patients would have to pay $2.2 million to get one injection.”

NanoPalm is collaborating with KACST, King Saud University, and the National Guard Hospital to treat 15 sickle cell patients from Saudi Arabia.

Al-Hasan says some 42,000 Saudis stand to benefit from NanoPalm’s product when it is launched in 2030.

RIYADH: Saudi Tadawul Group finds itself in a “fortunate” position amid the Kingdom’s rapidly growing industries, said a senior executive.   

On the sidelines of the Capital Market Forum 2024 held in Hong Kong, Nayef Al-Athel, group chief of sales and marketing officer at Tadawul Group, highlighted the company’s aim to attract global investors by sharing compelling success stories at international forums.  

Speaking to Arab News, Al-Athel explained the dual nature of the group’s goals, emphasizing commercial targets focused on maximizing revenues as a listed company.   

He said: “I think we are very fortunate as a capital markets group, fortunate in the sense that a lot is going on in the Kingdom. There’s unbelievable momentum in various facets of this country, and we are fortunate to be at the juncture of spillover from all these industries and all these new sectors being unraveled and unveiled in Saudi Arabia.”   

Al-Athel added: “The story of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is very attractive, and that attraction then translates to us being very attractive as a capital market.”  

Additionally, he emphasized Saudi Arabia’s geographic and time zone position, acting as a bridge between the East and West.   

“If you take that from a geographical standpoint, time zone perspective, that can be straightforwardly translated into capital markets narratives of connecting East to West,” Al-Athel said.   

He added: “If you look at the conference that we’re in here at CMF Hong Kong, it’s literally an attempt, which we think is very successful of us, connecting East to West.” 

Commenting on his statement from the previous CMF in February held in Riyadh, Al-Athel explained how Tadawul Group is at the forefront of global capital market leaders. 

“We are a top 10 stock exchange when it comes to market cap, to continue to propel ourselves high incomes to market cap rankings. That, of course, means more IPOs and more capital market transactions, more interest from investors all over the world,” he said.

Al-Athel further explained that the group’s success is building itself as an equity capital market powerhouse in Saudi Arabia, particularly through a significant number of IPOs in recent years. There’s a focus on expanding into debt capital markets and derivatives to diversify their offerings.  

“We’ve worked hard on building ourselves as an equity capital market powerhouse. The number of IPOs has been staggering over the last three to four years in the Kingdom,” Al-Athel stated. 

However, he mentioned that there are currently no specific announcements to make. 

“We’re living in a very exciting situation as we speak, hosting 300 investors from 44 companies at the Capital Market Forum in Hong Kong,” said Al-Athel, adding that it’s the first cross-border capital market event, with participation from entities in Saudi such as the CMA and the Ministry of Investment. 

He continued: “This is the flavor of where we are at the moment. This is where we are focused. Again, for sure there will be activity in the foreseeable future.” 

Furthermore, Al-Athel mentioned that the group has celebrated 400 securities listed on Tadawul.  

“Among those 400 listed securities, we find many success stories, and those success stories do sell themselves internationally. We have more than 22 companies traveling with us to Hong Kong, and the sole purpose of those companies, the Saudi corporates, is to tell their success stories to investors from Asia. 

Al-Athel concluded his statement by highlighting the significant transformation undergone by the capital market, particularly with the achievement of 400 listed securities and a diverse investor base spanning Saudi Arabia, the region, and globally. 

He noted that the rise in institutional investment and increasing numbers of IPOs signal a healthy market environment.