What Was Unique About Soley Therapeutics' Approach to Developing its Core Technology?

Soley Therapeutics’ co-founder and CEO Yerem Yeghiazarians, MD, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the unique approach his company took to developing its core technology. According to him, the concept began with a focus on how different cells react to stress as opposed to targeting a specific virus or endpoint.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What was unique about Soley Therapeutics' approach to developing its core technology?
Yerem Yeghiazarians: Typically, for the last several decades, the traditional approach to drug development is that we think of a disease that we're interested in, then we think of a potential target within that disease, and then we try to discover drugs that bind a given target. And then we do the downstream experiments.

For most diseases, that's a great approach. For monogenic simple diseases, that works amazingly well. But most complex diseases do not reduce neatly to a single target or pathway, and despite advancements in science, unfortunately, many drugs for complex diseases don't end up working in patients.

In fact, there is over 90-to-95% failure rate for many reasons. One of them is a lack of understanding of the complexity of complex diseases. So, we've switched, or flipped, drug discovery 180 degrees.

We initially identify novel molecules that drive a desired sulfate. By doing that, we can filter out broadly toxic molecules early. Once we have a drug of interest, we then define key targets, networks, and mechanism of action at the whole cellular level, not simply at an upstream target. Then we match the compounds to disease biology to identify disease indications and which patients with that disease we want to enroll in upcoming clinical trials.