Digest 8/8/23
Surveying great inventors and businesses
Axial: https://linktr.ee/axialxyz
Axial partners with great founders and inventors. We invest in early-stage life sciences companies such as Appia Bio, Seranova Bio, Delix Therapeutics, Simcha Therapeutics, among others often when they are no more than an idea. We are fanatical about helping the rare inventor who is compelled to build their own enduring business. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company . We are excited to be in business with you - email us at info@axialvc.com
Large language models to match patients with clinical trials
Around a third of trials stop because of recruitment problems with the majority, >80% of them delayed due to recruitment & dropout rates. LLMs have a wide range of possible applications in life sciences, but trials and anything that relies on texts seem like the best fits for scalable products.
Within trials, LLMs probably don’t help with recruiting. They help with optimizing inclusion/exclusion criteria and maybe notifying patients about a trial. Currently patients are found in registries filtered by a variety of codes (ICD-10, CPT, LOINC). LLMs offer a more efficient approach - access patients records from EHRs as well as unstructured text like doctor notes, building profiles based on a wider-range of data points (i.e. biomarkers, test results, treatment history), then notifying both the patient & clinician if the former is eligible and a fit.
This approach will have to maintain patient privacy in order to comply with laws in the US. You can currently build these models for deidentified records or patients that have opted-in. The heavy lifting will be on the regulatory side. And a natural beachhead seems to be LLM products for patients already in registries. Building software that has better patient engagement that can expand to the broader population once these models can access EHRs. Potentially boosting participation but more importantly matching patients to trials they are best fit for
Vault: The Business of AI in Life Sciences
Lineage motifs: developmental modules for control of cell type proportions led by Martin Tran from the Michael Elowitz lab https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.06.543925v1
Neuralink:
- Raised $280M led by Founders Fund
- To bring its brain-computer interface technology closer to human clinical trials
- Focusing on paralysis then expanding its device to give people the ability to control a computer or mobile device anywhere
Ascidian Therapeutics:
- Founded in 2020 to develop exon-editing RNA drugs
- With its platform replacing mutated exons at the RNA level
- Targeting genes with high mutational variance while maintaining native gene expression
- First focusing on ABCA4 retinopathy
Sage Therapeutics & Biogen announced that the FDA approved ZURZUVAE (zuranolone) 50 mg for adults with postpartum depression (PPD)
The FDA also issued a Complete Response Letter (CRL) for zuranolone to treat adults with major depressive disorder (MDD)
Atrasentan
An oral ETA receptor antagonist in Phase III clinical trials for IgA nephropathy & Phase II trials for Alport Syndrome, designed based on prior non-peptide ETA receptor antagonists from Abbott Labs
Developed by Chinook Therapeutics (acquired by Novartis)
T cell-based methods for predicting polypeptide immunogenicity
Inventors: Shan Chang and Sivan Cohen
Current Assignee: Genentech
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ac/db/2f/0a1755fef0f83c/US20230184747A1.pdf
Membrane protein nanoparticles for antigen presentation invented by members of the Chou Lab at Harvard https://otd.harvard.edu/explore-innovation/technologies/membrane-protein-nanoparticles-for-antigen-presentation/
Eikon Therapeutics is hiring a senior research associate for process chemistry https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3687979629/
Scientist Stories: Johannes Textor, Immunological Intelligence
"For me it has been that I have never been afraid of moving fields. So if you have a good idea and it is not exactly in the field of your comfort zone, have the courage to move out of your comfort zone and start working on a different organ or a different disease. In the end, science is science."
- Hans Clevers, Head of Pharma Research and Early Development at Roche
