Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development
Technology: ENEA leverages artificial intelligence to identify new synthetic drugs
An innovative AI based platform to rapidly identify new synthetic drugs in the European territory, in support of the EU Early Warning System EWS [1] and to protect public health and safety will be implemented as part of the EU project NARCOSIS. The project, coordinated by ENEA, comprises 18 partners [2], including the Raggruppamento Carabinieri Investigazioni Scientifiche and the universities Roma Tor Vergata, Bari and Cattolica del Sacro Cuore for Italy.
Addressed to police forces, forensic laboratories and health care institutions, the new platform will update in real time using AI to support state-of-the-art analytical investigations (spectroscopy, omics technologies, mass spectrometry, and NMR) enabling simultaneous analysis of different components of a biological sample (proteins and secondary metabolites). The results of instrumental analyses processed by AI will be used to identify new drugs and their metabolites in complex matrices, e.g., biological fluids, even if present in minute amounts.
“The rapid proliferation of new psychoactive substances (NPS) pose a significant public health threat that is putting significant pressure on exisisting analysis and warning systems, as the identification process is long and laborious,” explained Roberto Chirico at the ENEA Diagnostics and Metrology Laboratory, coordinator of the NARCOSIS project with Massimiliano Guarneri and Alessandra Pasquo. “The tools available to discover new drugs,” he said "are in fact based on shared lists, which, although constantly updated, do not appear sufficient when considering NPS, which are often present in very low concentrations and in complex samples with unprecedented or modified chemical structures.
ENEA will also be responsible for ensuring that data are shared in accordance with current regulations. In fact, only anonymous analytical data will be shared at the European level, while sensitive information will be stored in relevant laboratories.
At the end of the project in 2027, a demonstration of the NARCOSIS platform is planned in Portugal, hosted by the local National Police.
Notes
[1] Early Warning System- EWS: Department for Drug Policy-EU Early Warning System.
[2] ENEA, KEMEA (Center for Security Studies), Ministry of Defense (Carabinieri Scientific Investigations Grouping), University of Alcalá, EIIR (Europejski Instytut Badan Interdyscyplinarnych), Fraunhofer-Institut für Chemische Technologie, University of Bari "Aldo Moro," METROHM, VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland), Ministerio del Interior - Policía Nacional, ISDEFE (Ingeniería de Sistemas para la Defensa de España), National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Science, DIN (German Standardization Institute), Polícia Judiciária, Bar Ilan University, University of Tor Vergata, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.