Episode Contributors: Ayush Noori, Ashton Trotman-Grant, Linda Goodman
Episode Summary: Millions of people die every year from chronic diseases. Traditional drug discovery has failed in identifying solutions to many of these persistent health challenges. Functional genomics is offering a way forward by identifying gene networks and enabling the development of drugs with very specific targets. But, rather than just relying on gene targets within humans, Linda and her company, Fauna Bio, is casting a wider net across the animal kingdom. Extreme adaptation is common across many mammals, giving us an incredible pool of potential targets to go after. Whereas a single heart attack can kill a person, certain animals not only survive 25 heart attacks a year but also go on to thrive, living 2x longer than other mammals their size. By identifying and understanding the gene networks underlying these extreme adaptations, Fauna can identify novel targets across 415 different species, map them to human genes, and develop drugs that exploit our natural protective physiological mechanisms.
However, the process by which gene transcription is regulated is incredibly complex; thus, prediction transcriptional regulation has been an open problem in the field for over half a century. In his work, Eeshit used neural networks to predict the levels of gene expression based on promoter sequences. Then, he reverse engineered the model to design specific sequences that can elicit desired expression levels. Eeshit’s work developing a sequence-to-expression oracle also provided a framework to model and test theories of gene evolution.
About the Guest
Linda is the Co-Founder and CTO at Fauna Bio, a biotechnology company leveraging the science of hibernation to improve healthcare for humans.
She earned an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge and got her Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics from Harvard University.
Key Takeaways
Many mammals have evolved complex adaptations that enable them to survive in extreme environments or withstand physiological events that humans cannot.
At Fauna Bio, Linda Goodman and her team are working to better understand the biological networks that underlie these adaptations, in hopes of developing therapeutics inspired by the adaptations of the animal kingdom.
Impact
Drawing on a completely new source of knowledge about the defense mechanisms of living organisms, Fauna Bio goes beyond the limitations of traditional drug development and looks for better, more effective drugs based on natural defense mechanisms.
Company: Fauna Bio