Turning drug development on its head

Drug discovery is usually a goal-driven and iterative process, as researchers look for innovative new routes to target particular diseases and study those diseases in afflicted patients to learn how they tick.

In this instalment of the pharmaphorum podcast, host Jonah Comstock welcomes Alchemab CEO Young Kwon, whose company has a different approach: starting with the healthiest of individuals and studying them to find out why they aren’t sick. Specifically, they’re looking through large data sets of healthy and disease-resistant people for common antibodies that could help us all fight disease.

There’s a lot to talk about with this approach, from how they source their patients to how they sift through the mountains of data (spoiler alert: AI is involved). Young also gets into how the company came by this novel approach and what they have to show for it so far.

You can listen to episode 98 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it - and subscribe to the rest of the series - in iTunes, Spotify, acast, Stitcher, and Podbean.