Abstract

Despite the ever-increasing costs in drug discovery and the progress made on understanding the molecular causes of debilitating diseases, the number of drug targets which are adequately addressed with therapeutic agents remains alarmingly modest. PhoreMost aims to remove barriers to drug discovery with its novel SITESEEKER® technology: a live cell, hyper-unbiased phenotypic platform that can rapidly identify unanticipated and novel druggable sites in disease-driving targets. The precision and reach of the SITESEEKER® approach addresses critical blind-spots in traditional target discovery methods and dramatically expands the druggable landscape for myriad diseases. The PhoreMost SITESEEKER® technology is enabled by our protein interference (PROTEINi®) which uses programmatically-controlled and diverse libraries of small, highly active microprotein shapes. These are introduced into cells in massively complex screening campaigns to explore and identify novel phenotypic interactions which positively affect disease pathophysiology. Since our approach operates directly at the protein level, the new druggable space can be defined as an inherent part of the target-function screening process and substantially reduces the time taken for small molecule development. PhoreMost is currently advancing novel drug discovery programmes in different therapeutic areas, including cancer, immuno-oncology and neurodegeneration. Following a mixed model which creates fertile and synergistic partnerships with academia and industry, alongside our own internal drug discovery, this model is progressing a rich pipeline of first-in-class drugs to market.