San Francisco, California, United States
Saul Kato, Frédéric Kerrest, Sean Escola
2017
Private company
Series A
25
The Longevity Fund
Rett Syndrome, TSC, Autism, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Schizophrenia, 22q11.2 Del Syndrome
Pre-clinical
We use patient stem cell-derived brain organoids to model brain disease. Starting with stem cells, we capture the genetic and human specific disease biology typically absent in animal models. We then use our advanced organoid technologies to generate brain region specific organoid models containing neural and glial cell type diversity, synaptic connectivity, tissue architecture and neural network activity.
Collectively, brain organoids provide unique access to human specific brain biology previously out of reach and unlock the next wave of neuro drug discovery.
Automation and scaled biology lie at the heart of our drug discovery approach. Our integrated automation, software and analytics platform supports long-term culture and assay of thousands of high quality and reproducible brain organoids, enabling us to harness the biological richness of brain organoid models. Highly curated and scaled biological datasets allow us to pursue both target-led and phenotype-led drug discovery and develop a deeper understanding of human brain disease and identify truly disease modifying therapies.
We apply leading-edge data analytics and machine learning approaches to integrate large scale high-dimensional phenotypic datasets and create comprehensive systems biology descriptions of brain disease. These “deep phenotypes” lie at the core of our drug discovery approach and reveal paths to new disease-modifying therapeutics for brain diseases with greater probability of clinical success. Deep phenotypes provide continued support throughout the drug development process, inform translational research, companion diagnostic development, patient stratification and clinical trial design.