May 13, 2025
Barry Bunin, PhD
Founder & CEO
Collaborative Drug Discovery
“Daily Pill May Work as Well as Ozempic for Weight Loss and Blood Sugar.” That’s the headline for a New York Times article about encouraging clinical trial results that could open up a huge market for a convenient daily pill to treat obesity and diabetes. “The experimental drug, developed by Eli Lilly and known as orforglipron, is a type of medication known as a GLP-1,” the article notes. “Drugs in this class like Wegovy have become hugely popular because they help people lose weight. But those drugs must be given as weekly injections, which has limited their use. If orforglipron can deliver similar results in an easy-to-take pill form, as the study suggested it could, it has the potential to reach many more patients and become a major blockbuster.” Eli Lilly & Co, which CDD spun out from in 2004, was already the largest market cap Big Pharmaceutical company, and now they will dominate even more. Also for showcasing the new AI and AI+ CDD Vault Modules, I use orforglipron as the example because it is such a beautiful molecule and the AI module automatically suggests reasonable bioisosteres at every atom clicked on which can be docked against any protein sequence generated by AlphaFold in CDD Vault (for example the triangle in the cyclopropyl group for non-chemists to see).
Figure 1: Generative Bioisosteres for every atom on orforlipron which are reasonable to chemists (not Michael Acceptors, nor PAINS, nor breaking Baldwin’s Rules).
Figure 2: Orforglipron docked to the GLP-1 Receptor in CDD Vault.
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“Roche to Invest $50 billion in US to Avoid Trump Tariffs, Create 12,000 Jobs.” That’s the headline Reuters carries about the Swiss-based pharmaceutical’s planned investment over the next five years. Fellow Swiss drugmaker Novartis recently said it would spend $23 billion in the United States while Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson have also announced sizeable investments recently. Reuters reports the United States is a crucial market for Roche, which generated nearly 48% of its sales here in 2024, thanks to blockbuster drugs like asthma and food allergy treatment Xolair and Ocrevus for multiple sclerosis. The article quotes Roche Chief Executive Thomas Schinecker saying, "Our investments of $50 billion over the next five years will lay the foundation for our next era of innovation and growth, benefiting patients in the U.S. and around the world.”
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“NVIDIA Accelerated Computing Resources and the NVIDIA BioNeMo Platform are Dramatically Accelerating the Pace of Innovation While Reducing the Cost." That’s the take-home message from Robert Fremeau, Founder & CEO of BrainStorm Therapeutics. The San Diego-based startup, is working to accelerate the development of cures for neurological disorders ranging from commonly known diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to hundreds of lesser-known, rare conditions, using AI-powered computational drug discovery paired with lab experiments using organoids: tiny, 3D bundles of brain cells created from patient-derived stem cells. The company, recently profiled in an NVIDIA blog, is trying to reduce the high failure rate of clinical trials by integrating human-derived brain organoids with AI-driven analysis. With its proprietary platform, BrainStorm can mirror human brain biology and simulate how different treatments might work in a patient’s brain. “Rare disease research is transforming from a high-risk niche to a dynamic frontier,” said Fremeau. “The integration of BrainStorm’s AI-powered organoid technology with NVIDIA accelerated computing resources and the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform is dramatically accelerating the pace of innovation while reducing the cost...” This is one of many cutting-edge companies working with NVIDIA, including CDD (with full disclosure):
https://www.collaborativedrug.com/cdd-blog/cdd-vault-nvidia-bionemo-alphafold2-diffdock
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“AI-Guided Hunt Points to PHGDH as an Upstream Drug Target in Alzheimer’s Disease.” That’s the headline from an article in Drug Discovery & Development about how researchers at the University of California San Diego believe they have found an early pinch point in the biology of Alzheimer’s disease, one that can be blocked without disturbing the brain’s normal chemistry. The scientists credit AI for guiding them there. The study, recently published in Cell, focused on phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase, or PHGDH, an enzyme best known for producing the amino acid serine. AI tools proved crucial in analyzing the protein’s structure after initial hypotheses failed. So the team took a closer look at PHGDH, which they had previously discovered as a potential blood biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease through analyses of human blood and brain-tissue datasets. Drug Discovery & Development writes: “By targeting PHGDH’s upstream influence on gene expression, specifically its non-enzymatic role in transcriptional regulation identified in this study, rather than mopping up plaques downstream, the approach could theoretically prevent or delay both cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Because the mechanism appears independent of familial AD mutations, it might benefit a broader patient population. If validated, such small-molecule inhibitors, which could potentially be administered orally, might complement existing therapies by combining upstream and downstream interventions in Alzheimer’s disease.”
"Amateur Athletes Are Turning to Ozempic to Raise Their Game.” That’s the headline for a Wall Street Journal article about runners, cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts who say weight-loss drugs give them a performance edge, despite potential risks. How far the experimentation goes is unclear, but it has caught the attention of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Last year, it added semaglutide, Ozempic’s active ingredient, to a list of substances it monitors to find potential patterns of misuse. Some health experts also have concerns: The drugs come with side effects that pose potential risks, such as too much appetite suppression for fuel-burning athletes. More research is needed on their use among healthy, fit people, they say. For lean athletes just looking for an edge, lifestyle changes are the better bet, said Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, the head physician for U.S. Rowing. “I would get back to some of the basics with training and talk about how we optimize your nutrition, your recovery, your training plan,” says Ackerman, a former national team lightweight rower. “I’m not a big fan of hacks.” I was an amateur athlete in college (wrestling), we would diet and exercise to make weight. It was painful, but everyone was on a fair playing field and had to weigh in at the same time.
Barry A. Bunin, PhD, is the Founder & CEO of Collaborative Drug Discovery, which provides a modern approach to drug discovery research informatics trusted globally by thousands of leading researchers. The CDD Vault is a hosted biological and chemical database that securely manages your private and external data.