430 million years
of immune intelligence.
Now computable.

Pathogens have spent 430 million years learning vertebrate immune systems. Zoonexus harnesses that evolutionary knowledge computationally, building species and pathogen-agnostic models that outpace viruses before they spread.

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Problem

75%
of emerging infectious diseases have zoonotic origin.1
5–15 yrs
average time from pathogen identification to a licensed vaccine, when development goes well.2

"The world's vaccine infrastructure is built to respond. Ours is built to anticipate."

Why now

Outbreaks don't wait for development timelines.

Every pandemic response has been reactive. By the time a vaccine target has been identified and tested, the outbreak has already peaked - and licensure is still a decade away. The scientific infrastructure to be proactive now exists. Zoonexus connects it into a single platform.

Chart showing Zoonexus forecast vs legacy development

The Platform

One platform. Any intracellular pathogen. Any vertebrate.

We treat immune systems as biological languages, and species as dialects. Our platform uses deterministic mechanistic AI models trained on open-source, licensed, and proprietary immunopeptidomics, mass spectrometry, and viral sequence data. Training on broad vertebrate diversity, from poultry to cattle to humans, helps the models learn conserved immune logic, not just one host-specific pattern.

Cross-Species Immune Model

Highly specialised expert models trained on immunopeptidomics data across diverse vertebrate species. Conserved immune pathways, including MHC-I, mean cross-species training yields a more generalisable, more precise core model at lower data cost.

Viral Evolution Forecasting

Analyses viral strains to estimate likely immune escape trajectories before variants emerge in circulation. Users receive strain-level risk scorings, including infectiveness and spillover risk by species, to support surveillance, target selection, and intervention planning.

Antigen Surface Prediction

Predicts which peptides are most likely to be presented on the surface of infected cells across host species. Users receive ranked peptide target lists for each viral strain, together with supportive metadata for evaluation and prioritisation.

SPEED

Fine-tuning for a new RNA virus in weeks, given access to pathogen sequence and immunopeptidomics data.

Scientific Foundation

Built on 65 years of foundational immunology.

From the discovery of the HLA system to computational immune escape prediction, every module in the Zoonexus platform rests on a peer-reviewed scientific lineage.

Scientific timeline of foundational immunology discoveries leading to Zoonexus

Dr. Tariq Daouda’s published work on computational immune escape prediction forms the algorithmic core of the Zoonexus platform.   PLOS Computational Biology (2021)  ·  Frontiers in Genetics (2023)

ACTIVE USE CASE

H5N1 · Avian Influenza

Avian Influenza:
a cross species threat.

H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has demonstrated unprecedented capacity to cross species barriers, moving from wild birds into domestic poultry and mammalian reservoirs like dairy cattle. This creates novel pathways for human spillover.

Zoonexus applies its cross-species immune modeling to predict conserved T-cell targets and variant escape priorities across these diverse hosts, enabling proactive vaccine design before a human-adapted strain fully emerges.

Discuss a collaboration
H5N1 Cross-Species Transmission & AI Prediction

The Team

The people behind the platform.

A cross-functional team spanning computational immunology, bioinformatics, product, partnerships, and venture-building — assembled to turn immune intelligence into a usable platform.

Dr. Tariq Daouda

CEO & CSO · Co-Founder

AI researcher specialized in biology and architect of Zoonexus's immune escape prediction engine. Expertise spans AI, immunopeptidomics, genomics, and transcriptomics. Previously at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Medical School. Co-first author on landmark immunopeptidomics research in Nature Communications, and lead author on PLOS Computational Biology work applying deep learning to MHC-I peptide presentation. Equal parts scientist and founder.

David Desjardins

CBO & CLO · Co-Founder

Business and legal architect. Structures the commercial and IP foundations that translate deep immunology science into durable venture value. Brings operational rigour to an inherently complex science.

Jan Stücke

Head of Product & Partnerships

Previously at Apheris and StormForge. Brings product and commercialisation experience from two venture-backed ML companies, with a focus on translating advanced technical systems into usable products and strategic partnerships.

Albert Feghaly, MSc

Head of Bioinformatics

University of Montreal. Co-author on CAMAP (PLOS Computational Biology, 2021). Architect of the RNA-Seq, Ribo-Seq, and sliding-window extraction pipelines that generate XSMPP’s training corpus and strengthen operational continuity across the platform.

34 Ventures

AI Startup Studio · Tech Development Partner

Provides engineering capacity to accelerate product and platform development.

Oubaïda Sondé, MSc

AI & Software Developer

Deep learning and computational biology experience across bioinformatics, single-cell sequencing, and bio-image analysis, with a focus on turning research-grade AI models into deployable tools for scientific applications.

Houda Akoumi, MSc

AI & Software Developer

Deep learning and computational biology experience across NGS pipeline development, genomic data processing, with a focus on bridging laboratory science and software engineering

Contact

Work with us.

Researchers & Data Partners

We are seeking immunopeptidomics and pathogen sequence datasets, especially for neglected zoonotic RNA viruses. Bat host immune data particularly welcome.

Investors

Pre-seed stage. Building the foundational immune intelligence platform for proactive pandemic prevention. SAFE and convertible note instruments available.

Grant Collaborators

Actively seeking co-applicants for CEPI rapid response calls, EIC Accelerator (Health), and Horizon Europe One Health programmes.

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