Some 70 percent of potential therapeutic targets are believed to be beyond the reach of conventional small molecule therapies or biologics. Macrocyclic peptides offer a way to get at elusive targets while providing desirable characteristics of both small molecule drugs and biologics. They offer oral bioavailability, can permeate cells, and engage complex targets with specificity. Unnatural Products is harnessing AI to create synthetic macrocyclic peptides to pursue previously undruggable targets. We spoke to Cameron Pye, CEO and co-founder of Unnatural Products, about how these peptides can target proteins that traditional therapies cannot reach, the engineering process for the company’s synthetic macrocyclic peptides, and their potential to lead to new innovative therapies for a range of conditions from cancer to obesity.

Through the creation of a chemical programming language, Chemify said it has been able to expand the chemical space it can explore. Chemify is combining this unique programming language with robotics and AI to digitize chemistry. The company, though, has much grander ambitions than being a drug developer. It wants to be the infrastructure for the industry. We spoke to Lee Cronin, founder and CEO of Chemify, about the company’s platform technology for digitizing chemistry, how its chemical programming language expands the chemical space it can explore, and how the integration of robotics into its platform accelerates drug discovery.

Prescription digital therapies, the use of software to treat disease, are growing in number. Already there have been 140 prescription digital therapies that have been granted market access through national regulatory and reimbursement pathways. That represents a five-fold increase in the since 2021, according to the IQVIA Digital Health Trends 2024 report. We spoke to Murray Aitken, executive director of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, about the report, why digital health companies faced challenging times in recent years, and why your next prescription may be in the form of an app. 

There has been growing interest in the potential of psychedelics to treat a variety of mental health conditions. While some focus has been put on synthesizing compounds that can target the receptors psychedelics bind to without inducing their hallucinatory effects, Filament Health is taking a notably different approach. The company, co-founded by Ben Lightburn who previously ran a firm specializing in natural extraction technologies, is focusing on developing pharmaceutical grade botanical drugs that may benefit from multiple active compounds rather than an isolated active ingredient. We spoke to Ben Lightburn, founder and CEO of Filament Health, about the company’s approach to psychedelic medicine, the case for natural botanical extracts rather than synthetic compounds, and its lead experimental therapy that targets methamphetamine use disorder. 

Gain Therapeutics' platform technology Magellan leverages AI, structural biology, and physics-based models to identify novel binding sites on otherwise undruggable proteins implicated in diseases. The company’s experimental Parkinson’s disease therapy has the potential to slow or stop progression of the neurodegenerative condition by stabilizing a lysosomal enzyme implicated in the disease. We spoke to Gene Mack, interim CEO of Gain, about the company’s platform technology, how its experimental therapy for Parkinson’s disease works, and what other conditions might be good candidates for its platform technology to target.

We continue our holiday tradition by welcoming STAT News Senior Biotech Writer Adam Feuerstein for our annual look back at the year that was in biotech and what’s ahead for the industry with the JPMorgan Healthcare conference and beyond in 2025. Feuerstein offers his view on finance and dealmaking in 2024, new drug approvals, and his annual take on the best and worst CEOs of the year. We also discuss what Trump 2.0 may look like for the industry, changes coming to the FDA and other agencies, and what hot technologies to watch in the year ahead. 

Prolific Machines uses light to precisely control virtually any function in any cell to transform what is possible with biomanufacturing. In combination with optogenetics and AI, the technology has the potential to impact a wide range of industries, from food production to pharmaceuticals, by enabling new capabilities, reducing costs, and improving sustainability. We spoke to Deniz Kent, co-founder and CEO of Prolific Machines, about the company’s photomolecular platform technology, the benefits it provides over traditional biomanufacturing methods, and how it could be used to not just cultivate meat but make a steak.

ImpriMed is working to deliver on the promise of precision medicine by using a patient’s live cancer cells to see how they respond to different treatment options and artificial intelligence to predict which medicines will work best. The company has had impressive results with its customers to date, but the catch is that it has initially targeted its service to the veterinary market, and its dogs and cats have benefited from it. The company is now working to bring its offering to two-legged patients. We spoke to Sungwon Lim, CEO of ImpriMed, about its functional precision medicine and AI platform to match cancer patients to the best available therapy for them, its decision to roll out the service first to the veterinary market, and what it is doing to bring its service to humans.

One of the limitations of small molecule drugs and monoclonal antibodies is the difficulty they face in binding to a large number of proteins that could prove to be critical targets in combating various diseases. Aikium is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create a new class of protein biologics called SeqRs that are designed to bind to disordered regions of proteins that have long been beyond the reach of traditional therapeutics. We spoke to Eswar Iyer, co-founder and CEO of Aikium, about the novel class of SeqR proteins the company is developing, how they can bind to targets that traditional medicines can’t, and the potential to transform drug development by expanding the world of druggable targets.

Esophageal cancer is a growing healthcare concern with a steady increase in the number of cases in the last four decades, a development that runs counter to what’s been seen in other major types of cancer. Some 22,000 people are diagnosed each year in the United States with the disease and it is responsible for 16,000 deaths annually. Now, though, Lishan Aklog, chairman and CEO of Lucid Diagnostics, says today esophageal cancer is preventable through early detection in the pre-cancer stage. We spoke to Aklog about Lucid’s test to detect esophageal cancer, how it works, and its potential to change outcomes for people with the condition by catching it before it turns into a deadly cancer.