Fauna Bio Unveils Fauna Brain™ AI Platform to Speed Up Nature-Inspired Drug Discovery

Fauna Bio, a biotechnology firm based in Emeryville, California, is making strides in transforming the landscape of drug discovery through its innovative use of animal genomics. The company has introduced Fauna Brain™, an advanced AI-driven platform aimed at expediting the identification of drug targets and refining early-stage research and development processes. This sophisticated system marks a significant progression from the company's earlier Convergence™ discovery engine, offering promising results for both their in-house projects and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.

Fauna Brain operates as a multi-agent AI system capable of conducting intricate research tasks that traditionally require the expertise of specialized teams. This includes the identification and evaluation of drug targets, compilation of supporting evidence, and creation of comprehensive concept sheets. These sheets provide mechanistic justifications and analyses of risks versus benefits. The integration of Fauna Bio's proprietary datasets with publicly accessible databases and scientific literature significantly reduces the time and cost involved in the discovery process.

The efficiency of Fauna Brain is evident in its ability to assess a single target in just 2.5 minutes at a mere cost of approximately $0.01. It can simultaneously evaluate multiple targets, thereby further decreasing the time required to analyze thousands of potential candidates. This unprecedented efficiency allows Fauna Bio to investigate a broader range of targets more swiftly and economically than traditional research and development methodologies allow.

This platform is powered by Fauna Bio’s Convergence™ AI framework, which focuses on identifying and enhancing druggable human targets by utilizing comparative genomics insights from mammals exhibiting unique phenotypes. Such phenotypes include hibernation, regeneration, and resistance to fibrosis, cancer, or metabolic disorders. The system encompasses data from 292 species, 24 tissues, and 21 time points, supported by an extensive array of sequence reads, transcriptomes, proteomes, and epigenomes. Fauna Bio's membership in the Zoonomia Consortium, a group highlighted in the journal Science, has facilitated the alignment of whole genomes across 240 different mammalian species. This gives Fauna Brain a distinct perspective in uncovering conservation-based protective mechanisms that conventional human-centric datasets may overlook.

Utilizing its Convergence AI engines — Orca, Centaur, and Pegasus — Fauna Brain identifies protective biological signatures in animals and maps these to human disease pathways. It pinpoints the most promising therapeutic targets to enhance efficacy, druggability, and safety. This methodology has already shown translational potential, with two targets prioritized by Fauna Brain advancing into funded research collaborations with a major pharmaceutical partner.

According to Ashley Zehnder, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Fauna Bio, "Fauna Brain represents a new chapter for us. It enables us to apply AI to some of nature’s most resilient biological systems at an unprecedented scale and speed. The fact that our prioritized targets are progressing into pharma-backed initiatives confirms its significance."

Fauna Bio's internal research agenda includes projects focused on heart failure, neuroprotection, obesity, and retinal diseases, with new ventures emerging in space health and radiation resistance. One notable candidate, Faun1083, is derived from genes associated with hibernation and has shown promise in improving diastolic dysfunction in a preclinical model of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Other projects are investigating neuron survival and metabolic reprogramming under extreme conditions.

In summary, Fauna Bio is poised at the forefront of biotechnology innovation, harnessing the power of AI and comparative genomics to translate the evolutionary adaptations of resilient mammals into pioneering therapies for human health. Their work spans diverse therapeutic areas and includes collaborations with global pharmaceutical leaders.