Can we expand therapies by reaching for undruggable targets?

A conversation with Mauro Mileni, Ph.D., and Chris Roth, Ph.D., from Abilita Therapeutics

Transparent blue capsules each holding intricate structures resembling cells or circuits.

Despite the development of powerful computational tools and wet-lab technologies, finding robust hits continues to be a major challenge for drug discovery teams. To gain more insight into how companies are approaching this and other challenges with filling a successful therapeutic pipeline, we spoke with Mauro Mileni, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, and Chris Roth, Ph.D., Vice President of Research at Abilita Therapeutics. 

CAS: What inspired you to launch your own company?

CAS: What do you see as the biggest challenges in drug discovery?

CAS: This seems like a major limitation, what do you propose as a solution?

CAS: Do you think this new technology is only applicable to small molecule screening?

CAS: Besides the potential for discovery, are there other benefits for developing therapeutic antibodies?

CAS: What other bottlenecks for drug discovery do you see in the industry?

CAS: Do you think AI software like AlphaFold can help overcome these challenges?

CAS: If you had a magic wand to change anything about drug discovery, what would you change?

Mauro Mileni is the Founder and CEO of Abilita Therapeutics. He established the company with the aim of translating concepts forged from years of working on difficult membrane proteins often called “undruggable”, such as GPCRs and ion channels, into groundbreaking new technologies capable of overcoming fundamental obstacles and making them “druggable”. Mauro had long envisioned an innovative approach that would harness the power of evolution to address inherent challenges associated with the membrane proteins themselves, a technology that can improve their properties and enable discovery for virtually any target. Before founding Abilita, Mauro earned a Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt am Main, did postdoctoral work at The Scripps Research Institute, and was a key structural biology scientist at Receptos, Inc.

Chris Roth is the Vice President of Research at Abilita Therapeutics and has been with the company for nine years. Like Mauro, Chris acquired extensive experience in membrane protein engineering, production, and structure determination during his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work at The Scripps Research Institute where he was part of the team that solved some of the first high-resolution GPCR crystal structures and an inventor of key GPCR engineering technologies that continue to be used throughout the field. Chris left Scripps to join Receptos as one of the first members of the scientific team at Receptos and worked with the team to move GPCR structure-based approaches from an academic pursuit to real-world drug discovery.

Abilita Therapeutics is an early drug discovery company whose mission is to create transformative options for future patients by unlocking the full therapeutic potential of membrane protein targets. They are building a pipeline of antibody therapeutics discovered using their proprietary Enabled Membrane Protein (EMP™) technology and partnering with pharmaceutical companies looking to amplify the potential of their EMP platform for drug discovery.