Embeda Biosciences is a Colorado-based biotechnology company that aims to discover potential medicines through the chemical analysis of plants. TechCrunch The company leveraged all the digital information from around the world about how people in different cultures have used plants to treat pain and illness.
The company’s database currently lists 38,000 medicinal plants associated with about 12,000 different diseases and symptoms. Once Enveda’s AI identifies the plants with the best therapeutic potential, team members collect the materials and test them using the company’s lab and AI models.
Unlike traditional methods that study individual molecules, Enveda’s Transformer model can decipher the “chemical language” of an entire sample.
“Once we know the shape of the molecules, we can prioritize the right set of molecules and say this could one day become a drug,” Korrul said.
The approach seems to be working, and two of the company’s drugs are set to enter clinical trials this year: one to treat a skin condition like eczema, and the other to treat inflammatory bowel disease, Korrul said.
The company’s scientific advances have also attracted investor attention, and the company announced it has raised $55 million in Series B2 funding from new investors including The Nature Conservancy, Microsoft, Premji Invest, and Lingot Investment Fund, as well as existing investors including Kinnevik, True Ventures, FPV, Rebel Ventures, and Jazz Venture Partners.
“Nature is so rich in chemical diversity and biological effects that by studying just 100 plant species, we could find more potential medicines than we know what to do with,” Kollur said.
