Developing Drugs with Genetic Chemistry

Many of the world's most important drugs derive from nature - 61% on one recent estimate

Yet in essence, the fact that a willow tree makes a pain-killer (aspirin) or a fungus a cholesterol lowering compound (statins) is pure co-incidence - that is not the purpose of these compounds in the native species.

But even so these compounds are not ideal

Because nature does not "aim" to make drugs, both the compounds and the ways in which they are made are sub-optimal from a pharmaceutical industry point of view. This in turn has made natural product drug discovery a challenging process and many companies have abandoned the field.

So Evolva takes the ability of genetics to make exquisite compounds and applies it industrially to creating small molecule drugs

For example, we make it the sole survival criteria of "genetically enhanced" yeasts that they can inhibit HIV protease or enhance insulin sensitivity. Those yeasts that manage this feat are allowed to pass the genes (and compounds) they used onto the next generation. This second generation then tries new combinations of these genes for the same task. Some gene combinations give even better compounds, and so on...

By these approaches we create novel, distinctive, pharmaceuticals

We have compounds with potential utility in metabolic disorders, cancer, immunology and infectious disease. We are developing some of these compounds into the clinic.

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