Editor Rebekah Jordan spoke to Kevin Kreutter, Ph.D., senior vice president, Drug Discovery, Empress Therapeutics about how the company is using AI to analyse genetic data, to accelerate and refine small molecule drug discovery.
Q. Could you please explain more about the process in how particular DNA sequences encode enzymes to advance drug discovery?
Those who are familiar with the central dogma of biology know that DNA encodes RNA encodes proteins. Empress adds the next logical step, that certain proteins known as enzymes create or modify chemistry. By understanding how enzymes catalyse the chemical reactions necessary to create a specific small molecule, it becomes possible to use genetic engineering and synthetic biology techniques to go from DNA sequences to compounds.