Discover the EMPATH forward.
Can the full potential of natural products be realized with the latest advances in AI-driven cell assay, genome mining, synthetic biology/gene editing, and organic synthesis? These are the discoveries energizing us as scientists and oncologists at Empath Biosciences. Using the molecular diversity of nature as both inspiration and source, we’re navigating a new path forward: to discover and structurally engineer natural products into novel classes of anticancer therapies.
Through billions of years of trial and error, nature has generated and refined molecular efficacy and efficiency, leading to many notable advances in medicine, including cancer therapies, of which there are no shortage of examples.
While the complex architecture of natural products have evolved to be potent and selective of their target, most did not evolve from optimization in humans. Therefore, some possess pharmacological liabilities including toxicity, low bioavailability, and chemical instability.
But advances in microbial genome mining, multiplexed cellular activity assays, and synthetic biology have made it possible to now discover and structurally modify natural product scaffolds to create safe, effective therapies more efficiently.
Reading the genomic blueprints of potential drug producing organisms allows us to assess their biosynthetic potential for making new lead molecules with the ability to interact with known and previously undiscovered drug targets. This stacks the deck for discovery of novel bioactive drug leads by choosing the most biosynthetically ‘gifted’ organisms for our discovery process.
High throughput analysis of the activity of molecules from gifted organisms against many targets simultaneously using AI-powered analysis, accelerates the discovery of novel classes of lead molecules.
Synthetic Biology uses the power of biological systems to structurally modify lead molecules to optimize them for human medicine. Biocatalysis and genomic editing of the blueprints encoding the biosynthesis of lead molecule scaffolds in producing organisms permits engineering of their scaffolds to optimize them for use in human medicine. High throughput analysis of the activity of molecules from gifted organisms against many targets simultaneously using AI-powered analysis, accelerates the discovery of novel classes of lead molecules. Likewise, organic synthesis can also be used to generate and selectively modify the chemical structure to improve pharmacological properties of drug canidates. These methods produce green and renewable means of generating drugs.
We'd love to share more about our mission to unlock the power of nature to take on cancer.
