Our Science

Diseases are Multifactorial. Therapeutics Need to Be Multi-targeted.

 

It is increasingly recognized that multiple biochemical species in the body, connected by a disease network, are responsible for the disease phenotype.  Human body has at least about 1.3 million such distinct chemical species which do not include the genes of the microbes that make up human microbiome.  All FDA approved drugs so far target less than 1000 unique targets. 

Most of today’s therapeutics are based on single agent – a small molecule, antibody, gene therapy agent or a peptide – that usually binds to one or only a handful of targets. When target “mutates” or an alternative signaling mechanism gets established or a ligand binds with a high specificity to unintended target, drug experiences the problems of resistance and/or unintended side effects. We believe for a drug to be truly effective it has to be able to modulate multiple targets connected in a disease network that include coding genes to transcription processes to proteins to metabolites.

Network Modulating Drugs

Our drugs are designed to modulate up and downstream targets in a disease network. They are based on the following principles.

No One Size Fits All
Diversity of targets requires diversity of the drug molecules to have effective binding.

Biological Targets belong to a Network
Modulation of one target affects others in the network.

Diseases often have common roots
Systems biology considers seemingly unrelated conditions and pathways.

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