The biotech company Enveda has developed a new approach to explore and ‘decode’ nature’s chemistry. Its goal is to discover molecules that could underpin a new generation of blockbuster drugs. In this podcast, the firm’s founder and chief executive, Viswa Colluru, explains how Enveda could become a trillion-dollar business, and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust manager Tom Slater considers the risks and opportunities the company faces.

Background:

Scottish Mortgage first invested in Enveda in November 2024. The US-headquartered company uses a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) large language model to discover and develop new medicines from natural sources. At the time of writing, it has a pipeline of 12 drug candidates in various stages of development that could form the basis of new therapies to treat dermatitis, obesity, inflammation and chronic pain. Enveda’s founder, Viswa Colluru, has reimagined the drug discovery process from first principles based on his insight that natural molecular compounds should have a better safety profile than engineered ones.“Healthcare is the biggest industry in the world, and if you can increase the odds of success in drug discovery, there are so many unmet needs that its opportunity is effectively unbounded,” says Scottish Mortgage manager, Tom Slater.

Timecodes:

00:03    Coming up…

00:50    Introduction

02:49    Viswa Colluru interview begins

03:08    “Things that work in the lab [often] don’t work in people”

04:35    A mission grounded in a family death

08:50    Invested life savings

11:24    Picking up from where evolution left off

15:16    Using AI to make sense of nature

21:32    A chemistry-first approach

25:16    Historic points of failure

27:32    Reimagining drug discovery from first principles

29:19    Splitting work between US and India

32:19    A growing drug candidate pipeline

35:07    Partnering with Microsoft and Sanofi

38:19    The relationship with Recursion Pharmaceuticals

41:02    “Incredible people looking in unexpected places”

43:00    A globally loved pharma company

43:38    Tom Slater on the investment case

52:42    Podcast lookahead

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Read the transcript.

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Presenter: Claire Shaw

Executive Producer: Leo Kelion

Line producer: Jessica Rooney

Broadcast Technician: Samual O’Hare

Editors: Kerry Ingram

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