Meliora Therapeutics

Meliora Therapeutics is an oncology drug development company that applies machine learning and computational data science to determine the true mechanism of action (MOA) of small-molecule cancer therapeutics. The company's stated premise is that modern cancer drug development is frequently not mechanism-driven, which contributes to later-stage clinical failures; press coverage of its seed financing cites an approval rate for cancer drugs in development of roughly three percent. Meliora's approach uses a molecular fingerprint matching method to link specific therapeutic molecules to the mechanisms by which they actually act, with the goal of raising the probability of clinical success.

The company's platform, AnchorOmics, captures drug activity at molecular, cellular and organismal levels and converts those readouts into a standardized digital format described as a digital fingerprint, drawing on the transcriptome, methylome, proteome, morphological state and other modalities. Machine learning is used to generate a fingerprint for each perturbation and to locate it within an atlas of drug mechanisms, combining multiple modalities into a single vector-space atlas. Meliora states it is building the industry's first atlas of drug mechanisms and their impact on cancer biology, and that its platform can identify mischaracterized compounds — molecules with known safety profiles whose therapeutic window may be expanded once their real mechanism is understood — as starting points for precision oncology programs.

Founding story

Meliora was founded in September 2021 by David Li (CEO and co-founder), Jason Sheltzer, PhD (scientific co-founder) and Joan Smith (technical co-founder), with the aim of making genomics and computational approaches first-class principles of cancer drug product development. The scientific basis traces to Sheltzer's June 2019 paper in Science Translational Medicine, "Off-target toxicity is a common mechanism of action of cancer drugs undergoing clinical trials," which reported that the proteins ostensibly targeted by a set of clinical-stage drugs were nonessential for cancer cell proliferation and that the drugs' efficacy was unaffected by loss of the putative target, indicating killing via off-target effects.

Business model

B2B biotechnology. Meliora develops proprietary precision oncology therapeutic programs built on its internal computational platform, and its platform is described as enabling companies to identify the true mechanism of action of small molecule compounds; the company has also stated an intent to build industry partnerships.

Traction

At the time of its September 2022 seed round, Meliora had a working computational prototype for MOA identification and had generated in-vitro data for dozens of compounds predicted to have alternate mechanisms of action, with many showing strong potency against the in silico predicted target. The company has since built out a multidisciplinary team spanning drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, cancer biology, data science and operations.

Latest developments

Senior scientific hires have been added, including Claudio Chuaqui, who has led the drug discovery group since April 2023 and previously led drug discovery at Syros Pharmaceuticals, and Anand Selvaraj as Head of Cancer Biology, previously at H3 Biomedicine and Novartis. CEO David Li discussed the company's approach in a multi-part interview series on The Biotech Startups Podcast.