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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Presenter: Claire Shaw
Executive Producer: Leo Kelion
Line producer: Jessica Rooney
Broadcast Technician: Samual O’Hare
Editors: Kerry Ingram
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