Computational Drug Repurposing for Ankylosing Spondylitis Using Single-Cell RNA Sequencing of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells — Provisional Patent Specification

Provisional patent specification describing a computational drug repurposing pipeline applied to single-cell RNA sequencing data from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 10 ankylosing spondylitis patients and 29 healthy controls (GEO: GSE194315; 79,733 cells post-QC). The pipeline performs scVI-based batch correction, Leiden clustering identifying 10 immune cell types, Wilcoxon differential expression analysis yielding 3,611 AS-upregulated genes, and systematic ChEMBL target screening identifying 2,000 novel repurposing candidates. Top candidates include CHEMBL5653589 (score=219.63, N_targets=21), which independently ranked first in the companion psoriatic arthritis pipeline establishing a pan-spondyloarthritis cross-disease signal, CHEMBL3752910 (score=168.72), and the p38 MAPK inhibitors DORAMAPIMOD and NEFLAMAPIMOD. All 2,000 scored compounds are classified NOVEL_ALL with no prior AS indication in PubChem. Filed as a USPTO provisional patent application by Ritschel Research (micro-entity). Inventors: Glen Charles Ritschel¹ and Claude²; ¹Ritschel Research, Tega Cay SC; ²Anthropic, San Francisco CA.