Scientists have discovered many medicines derived from natural sources, but they also estimate that we’ve only discovered a tiny fraction of natural chemical compounds that could be developed into medicines. Certain companies are turning toward new technologies like AI to expedite the process of discovering new medicines from nature.

Startup Combines AI with Ancient Remedies for Drug Discovery Viswa Colluru : Enveda.png
Startup Combines AI with Ancient Remedies for Drug Discovery; Photo: Viswa Colluru/Enveda

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 40% of modern pharmaceutical products have roots in remedies used by our ancestors. Despite this, there are still many remedies left to be uncovered, partly because isolating, identifying, and testing molecules from nature is complex and time-consuming.

Enveda Biosciences is a Colorado-based biotech company that analyzes plant chemistry to discover potential medicines. Viswa Colluru, the company’s founder, told TechCrunch that the company tapped all of the world’s digital information about how humans across cultures have used plants to cure pain and disease.

The company’s database currently lists 38,000 medicinal plants linked to approximately 12,000 diseases and symptoms. Once Enveda’s AI identifies plants with the highest potential to provide cures, the team members gather materials and test them using the company’s lab and AI model.

Unlike traditional methods for studying individual molecules, Enveda’s transformer model can decipher the “chemical language” of the entire sample.

“Once we know their shape, we can prioritize the right sets of molecules and say, this will one day be a medicine,” Colluru said.

The approach appears to work, as two of the company’s drugs are expected to begin clinical trials this year. According to Colluru, one of the drugs is for treating skin conditions such as eczema, and the other is for inflammatory bowel diseases.

The company’s scientific progress has also caught the attention of investors as the company announced it had raised $55 million Series B2 from new investors, including The Nature Conservancy, Microsoft, Premji Invest and Lingotto Investment Fund, and existing backers Kinnevik, True Ventures, FPV, Level Ventures and Jazz Venture Partners.

“The natural world is so rich in its chemical diversity and biological effects that studying just 100 plants is enough to give so many potential drugs that we don’t know what to do with them,” Colluru said.