Mapping nature’s untapped chemistry

Summary:

This is a compressed version of Scottish Mortgage’s interview with the biotech’s founder Viswa Colluru, for those of you wanting just the highlights.

Listen to the full episode here.

The biotech company Enveda has developed a new approach to explore and ‘decode’ nature’s chemistry. Its goal is to discover molecules that could underpin a new generation of blockbuster drugs. In this podcast, the firm’s founder and chief executive, Viswa Colluru, explains why Enveda has the potential to become a trillion-dollar business, and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust manager Tom Slater considers the risks and opportunities the portfolio company faces.

Background:

Scottish Mortgage first invested in Enveda in November 2024. The US-headquartered company uses a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) large language model to discover and develop new medicines from natural sources. At the time of writing, it has a pipeline of 12 drug candidates in various stages of development that could form the basis of new therapies to treat dermatitis, obesity, inflammation and chronic pain. Enveda’s founder, Viswa Colluru, has reimagined the drug discovery process from first principles based on his insight that natural molecular compounds should have a better safety profile than engineered ones.

“Healthcare is the biggest industry in the world, and if you can increase the odds of success in drug discovery, there are so many unmet needs that its opportunity is effectively unbounded,” says Scottish Mortgage manager, Tom Slater.

Timecodes:

00:00    Introduction

01:00    Interview starts

01:10    “Things that work in the lab [often] don’t work in people”

02:30    A mission grounded in a family death

04:25    Investing his life savings

08:45    Partnering with Microsoft and Sanofi

Glossary (in order of mention):

Chronic myeloid leukaemia:

A type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells.

Mass spectrometer:

A lab instrument that measures the mass of molecules to help identify them.

SaaS:

Software as a service – software accessed online via a subscription.

Cost of capital:

How expensive it is for a company to raise money from investors or lenders.

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