At Innovation Endeavors, we invest in what we call the Super Evolution, which is the idea that breakthroughs in underlying experimental and computational technologies enable rapidly increasing scale, speed, and fidelity of experimentation. We believe this is especially salient in the life sciences where biological systems are non-linear, dynamic, dense, stochastic, and operate on multiple spatial and temporal scales. As we outlined in our prior thinking, we firmly believe that breakthroughs in the life sciences emerge at the intersection of technologies that drive more data, captured in a relevant context, that can be used to build new solutions. Cutting-edge computational methods serve as a foundational enabler to all parts of this flywheel.
Over the past two decades, we’ve witnessed a cambrian explosion of drug modalities. As target discovery tools have improved, it’s become clear that new therapeutic methods to effect function will be required to treat disease. For example, we need new therapeutic methods to 1) enact more durable efficacy in diseases that rapidly find ways to mutate and escape that evolutionary pressure, 2) allow us to more selectively target hyper-specific molecules to enable safer medicines, 3) drive different pharmacodynamics through rational polypharmacology or logic-gated target engagement. While we’re probably still scratching the surface of novel mechanisms for targeting disease, it is clear that creative scientists will continue to find new ways of driving biological effects.
In the more recent past, we’ve seen significant interest in modalities that can drive molecular interactions and selectively traffic molecules to particular locations in the cell. As biology is inherently context-dependent, this is a really interesting premise and demonstrates an emerging drug mechanism. Foundationally, this is the premise of molecular glues, heterobifunctional small molecules like degraders, activators, and the many other targeting chimeras (TACs), as well as constructs like antibody-drug conjugates and a host of additional tools. If we have the ability to selectively traffic molecules together or to specific intracellular compartments, we can drive drug effects in really novel ways.
We get excited when we see new therapeutic modalities being explored that are paired with novel approaches for iteratively testing those constructs in relevant contextual environments at high throughput with high-dimensional readouts. The challenge is that this requires a team capable of thinking through and developing the entire technology stack paired with deeply creative scientists chasing novel biology. When we met founder and CEO, Doug Chapnick, we knew he and the BioLoomics team were working on something unique.
BioLoomics was born out of experiences on a rapid threat assessment project funded by DARPA. The core thinking that emerged from this work led to the development of a platform that could rapidly cycle through hypotheses to find rare biological events of interest. BioLoomics’ platform combines technical advancements across hardware, wetware, and software to create a high-throughput, rapid-iteration approach that allows for a sophisticated traversal of protein design space. In other words, BioLoomics built a powerful design-build-test platform with mammalian biology in the loop for rapidly iterating toward optimal biological solutions. The platform enables BioLoomics to work on novel and differentiated therapeutic candidates that are uniquely accessible and that solve real clinical unmet needs.
In particular, the team is setting its sights on mechanisms that drive specific cellular trafficking. As a first application, this begins with extracellular and cell surface protein degradation. As compared to other approaches that have emerged in the last few years, BioLoomics has developed a truly unique way to drive a mechanism that is not limited to a single receptor. This greatly expands the contexts in which degradation and lysosomal-targeting are amenable.
We’re incredibly excited to partner with the BioLoomics team.
