Genomic data-driven drug design for precision oncology

Most of the drugs curing illnesses have been developed for the overall population. However, in order to achieve better outcomes in terms of higher effectiveness and lower toxicology, pharmaceutical companies need to tailor drugs to individual patients and thus stop the one-fits-all approach.

The big challenge faced by the industry is the discovery of the right target, stemming from the question of how to find and leverage relevant data for this specific purpose.

Two major innovations have been brought to the data sector, being used for both diagnosis and therapy, namely Flatiron Health focusing on electronic medical records and Owkin focusing on imaging data. However, given the type of data, these two players are mainly focusing on later drug development stages (you opt-out some people that you know will react badly). Epigene represents a new opportunity of leveraging data for drug discovery, focusing on oncology. By allowing aggregation of genomic data, the company can generate early stage drug discovery (identification of the target before the first studies). Thus Epigene has the potential of being the third major innovation in the health data sector for drug discovery.

Watch the video of the co-founder Akpeli Nordor👇🏻