Drug Target Portfolio Pharmacology Strategic & Technical Consulting
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DIRECTING SMARTER Therapeutic Strategy & De-risking drug discovery:
Drug Target Portfolio / pipeline strategy, Tox prediction & target de-risking, Novel drug targets, protein dynamics, & pharmacology StrategIC & TECHNICAL CONSULTING
Helping AI-for-drug-discovery companies answer "What drug targets should we work on? And what drug targets shouldn’t we work on?" - optimally & strategically.
Strategic portfolio-building based on biophysics, your company’s unique technological strengths, tox predictions, & competitive landscape - for powerful competitive & funding advantages
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We now have 3 specialized areas of expertise within AI-for-drug-discovery companies:
1. Biophysics-based structure-prediction & protein dynamics companies.
2. Drug target portfolio design for AI-for-drug-discovery companies.
3. Novel drug targets evaluation for companies.
We help de-risk drug discovery
We have predicted the toxicity results of clinical trials and warned our client companies away from certain big targets in the field — saving several of our AI-for-drug-discovery client companies countless years of effort, millions of dollars, and tons of wasted time, effort, and labor.
With poor drug target selection in the very beginning, ultimately little else matters.
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DrugAbility was founded in 2020 when it became apparent there was a need for directing smarter, more informed therapeutic drug target strategy to revolutionize drug discovery. DrugAbility helps AI-for-drug-discovery companies answer the question "What drug targets should we work on?" - optimally and strategically. Too many would-be drugs fail in clinical trials, often due to poor target selection leading to toxicity and drug side effects. This costs companies millions of dollars and years of unfortunately wasted time - considering that on average, a drug takes about 12 years and $1.3 billion dollars to make it to market.
With poor drug target selection in the very beginning, ultimately little else matters. Instead, fail fast and fail cheap. We have even predicted the toxicity results of some clinical trials for some of our AI-for-drug-discovery client companies — before they began work. By drug discovery companies engaging our drug target consulting services and investing a small amount of money up front to thoroughly assess a drug target’s safety and therapeutic feasibility, companies return their investment many-fold — by saving themselves millions of dollars and years of research in the long-term that would be lost with possible drug failures.
We offer world-class expertise to competitively strategize, build, and shape your AI-for-drug-discovery company’s drug target portfolio to maximize your technology and competitive advantage at the bleeding edge of drug discovery. We build a therapeutic niche specific to you to harness and leverage your company’s unique technology and strengths — and strategically choose the right therapeutic drug targets for you to maximize your company’s unique technological “superpowers” for powerful competitive advantages.
We have specialized expertise in drug target evaluation, drug target mechanistic pharmacology, & computational pharmacology for AI-for-drug-discovery novel drug target companies, as well as atomistic pharmacology for biophysics-based structure-prediction AI-for-drug-discovery companies involving drug target protein dynamics, conformational change, cryptic binding sites, and drug resistance mutations.
Lead STAFF BIO
Dr. Veena Thomas
CEO & Drug Target Portfolio Strategic & Technical Consulting
Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences & Pharmacogenomics, UCSF
Postdoc in Computational Pharmacology, Stanford University
B.S. in Biology, MIT
Former Director of Therapeutic Strategy at Redesign Science
Ph.D. Thesis at UCSF - Dr. Brian Shoichet's lab
Postdoc at Stanford - Dr. Vijay Pande’s lab
Undergraduate research at MIT - Dr. Vernon Ingram's lab
The former Director of Therapeutic Strategy at Redesign Science, Dr. Veena Thomas is a computational pharmacologist, mechanistic pharmacologist, atomistic pharmacologist, & drug target biologist — with a background in both computation and experiment. Dr. Thomas did her postdoctoral research in Dr. Vijay Pande’s lab at Stanford University, her Ph.D. in Dr. Brian Shoichet’s lab at UCSF (Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics), and her undergraduate degree at MIT in Biology.
In Vijay Pande’s group she determined the mechanism of action of a fatal drug side effect — and developed a hybrid ligand- and structure-based computational pharmacology protocol for drug discovery and drug repurposing. A former x-ray crystallographer, structural biologist, enzymologist, biophysicist, and protein thermodynamicist, Dr. Thomas studied protein stability, protein dynamics, & drug resistance mutations during her Ph.D. in Dr. Brian Shoichet’s lab at UCSF.
As the former Director of Therapeutic Strategy at Redesign Science — an AI-for-drug-discovery structure-prediction company using molecular dynamics for investigating protein dynamics, conformational changes, and cryptic site inhibitor binding — Dr. Thomas helped build Redesign Science’s drug target portfolio / internal pipeline, evaluated drug targets for Redesign’s internal pipeline and partnership opportunities, and developed an analytical framework for evaluation, prioritization, and triage of external partnership and collaboration opportunities.
Check out Dr. Thomas’s efforts to improve drug / vaccination safety with her TV interviews on ABC7 and NBC Bay Area on the Media page — after she was injected with the wrong Covid second vaccine dose due to clinic error — and her NBC Bay Area TV segment went viral.
Since she has devoted her life and career to improving drug safety and drug discovery, she decided to turn an unfortunate incident into good — and she reached out to ABC7 and NBC Bay Area to push for changes in vaccination protocols to improve drug safety for everyone.
Dr. Thomas’s NBC Bay Area TV piece went viral, getting over 700,000 views in just 3 days - and her outspoken drug safety activism resulted in El Camino Health completely redoing their vaccination clinic protocols to prevent such a medical error from ever happening there again.
Clients
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What clients are saying
ANAGENEX:
“Veena has been an invaluable help to Anagenex as we sort out which targets to consider. She takes an unbiased approach to each project, re-examining the rationale behind conventional wisdom both about things that “should” work and things that “cannot” work. Her advice has helped us set up a rigorous, scientifically sound, clinically innovative slate of targets that will propel our company forward.”
-Dr. Nicolas Tilmans, CEO / Founder, Anagenex
“Veena has been an invaluable asset to our company as we define our early drug discovery portfolio and strategy. Her ability to research and propose targets is deep and insightful. She has a great knack for digging deep into a target’s background and finding the key details about where others have failed and is able to propose a path forward for Anagenex to have success.
She is also great at advising what targets we should not pursue and providing the scientific reasons for this. She really understands our company’s strengths and what is special about how we approach new medicine discovery. I have enjoyed working with her very much!”
-G. Joseph Franklin, Senior Vice President and Head of Early Discovery, Anagenex
“Working with Veena was a distinct pleasure. She is very personable, professional, and has a keen mind for pairing business goals with relevant science targets. I was impressed with the depth of Veena’s work in order to make sure each target would (a) be of interest to our company (b) fill a specific niche of our portfolio and (c) had biological precedence of being a viable option. Scientifically, Veena takes care to fully understand the implications of targeting any aspect of a pathway and works to establish the best protein targets.
Not only does Veena display a depth of knowledge around biochemical and biophysical assays; but she draws in cell-based work to fully pull together a story. Personally, Veena is very easy to talk to and she takes the time during each meeting to fully hear and process a question as well as promote discussion across the team.”
-Dr. Meghan Lawler, Director of Affinity Technology, Anagenex
“Veena has helped our company to build a drug target portfolio. She demonstrated herself as an expert in drug target biology and applied rigorous study for target evaluation before adding it into the portfolio. She helped our company to build a strategically positioned portfolio of therapeutically relevant targets with high business potential. It was interesting and easy to work with Veena and I recommend using her as a consultant.”
-Dr. Svetlana Belyanskaya, VP of Biology, Anagenex
ATOMIC AI:
“Dr. Thomas's expertise was invaluable as we built out our initial target selection strategy. She was thorough and insightful in her review of the vast literature confronting us, and helped us narrow down the space of possibilities into specific, actionable directions. Her work had a direct impact on our overall strategic roadmap, and helped us avoid many potential pitfalls in selecting which diseases to pursue.”
-Dr. Raphael Townshend, CEO / Founder, Atomic AI
“It was a real pleasure to collaborate with Veena. With her attention to detail, she brought an incredible wealth of knowledge to our work. She is able to go very broad and very deep -- a rare combination of skills that is perfect for surveying the landscape and assembling a drug target portfolio.”
-Dr. Adrian Sanborn, Head of Biosciences, Atomic AI
“Veena's superpower is her ability to quickly survey a field and present the most salient details of a disease or target class, matched with her expertise on the realities of target selection and drug development. This made working with Veena both effortless and incredibly productive for our early explorations. As we move forward, the wealth of insights she gave us continues to contribute to our strategy.”
-Dr. Meredith Corley, Senior Scientist,
Atomic AI
Strategic Business marketing consulting CLIENTS
“Veena is a brilliant and insightful person filled with practical and effective strategic business ideas. She used her well rounded experience and great listening skills to formulate a specific game plan that helped me propel my business to a new level. I highly recommend using Veena as a consultant.”
-Mark Cernan, Realtor, Compass Real Estate; Menlo Park, CA
"Veena has given me invaluable tools to help position my company for success. Her ability to recognize my superpowers and adapt those strengths into an effective marketing strategy is a true testament to her creative business understanding. Collaborating together we have been able to reactivate many of my past patients, grow my private pay practice and position Strive Physical Therapy for sustained growth during a pandemic and beyond. Truly amazing!"
-Rob Abrams, CEO, Strive Physical Therapy, Inc.
Please reach out using the “Contact Us” button below with questions and for more information, find DrugAbility on LinkedIn, or reach out to Veena on LinkedIn (preferred).
