Marcel Frenkel, Ph.D., is an accomplished biochemist with incredible passion and a unique vision: to improve the prognosis of those who have cancer and other serious diseases by using cutting-edge AI algorithms to design novel treatments. His expertise in computational protein and drug design has united him with a team of brilliant scientists, engineers and biotech experts committed to making his mission a reality through Ten63 Therapeutics.
Frenkel, a biochemistry Ph.D. graduate from Duke University’s Donald Lab, has advanced potential treatments for diseases that are hard to tackle with traditional drugs. His work included pioneering the development of cutting-edge computational methods and compounds targeting “undruggable” targets like KRas, designing vaccines that may one day be capable of educating the immune system faster than HIV can evolve to escape it, uncovering novel drug resistance mechanisms, and collaborating with the NIH in designing antibodies for treating viral infections.
Frenkel joined Mark Hallen, Bruce Donald and Nancy Miller-Rich to fund Ten63 Therapeutics. Ten63 is revolutionizing drug discovery by creating the next generation of computational algorithms that combine physics and artificial intelligence to create drugs to deeply desirable but previously intractable targets. Ten63’s BEYOND Platform focuses on designing medications through hyper-efficient exploration of vast chemical and conformational space. The result is a generative method that overcomes the limitations of traditional drug discovery and previous computational and AI/ML methods.
“Ten63’s guiding principle is simple: if you always search the same place, you will never find anything new,” says Frenkel. The number of possible drug-like molecules in the universe is truly astronomical: as the name Ten63 suggests, there are 10^63 different chemicals that have the basic molecular properties typical of drugs. There are significantly more possible drugs than stars in the observable universe! Unfortunately, traditional drug discovery, still used by most pharma companies, explores only a tiny fraction of this space. Recently a great amount of effort has been put into expanding the chemical space explored by companies for drug discovery. Some more modern approaches like DNA-encoded libraries and computational methods like ultra docking methods and generative AI/Ml methods have expanded the search up to 100 billion compounds. This may sound like a lot; however, it represents less than 0.1% of the space Ten63’s BEYOND platform can explore.
The result is that Ten63 is designing novel medications against targets other groups have not been able to find solutions to. Ten63 states that their objective is to design medications tailored for optimal results. They want their therapeutics to provide durable efficacy, with limited adverse side effects. Ten63 says that by designing a drug molecule from its inception, and by having such a large space to start from, they can better control potential risks and ensure that it reaches patients faster and safer, reducing healthcare costs and increasing successful outcomes.
Ten63 focuses on targets that drive the critical biology of cancer. His team seeks out proteins that have been co-opted or mutated within cancer cells, allowing for rapid cell division, evading of the immune system, and spreading to other parts of the body – all potential characteristics associated with successful tumor growth. Ten63’s team astutely recognized that many of these cancer-driving proteins had been well elucidated by the scientific community leading to a wealth of understanding around the protein’s functional and biological properties. However, due to the limited chemical space that was available before the necessary chemistry to take action against these cancer-driving proteins had never been found. Frenkel believes Ten63’s BEYOND platform can change that paradigm, and that’s Ten63’s strong suit, taking on targets that have biomedical validation yet remain “undruggable.” Through this approach, they look to generate maximum value while impacting areas where they can do their best.
The Ten63 team is dedicated to discover new treatments for medical issues previously considered untreatable. Their revolutionary computational process — aptly called “BEYOND”– allows them to break past boundaries, seeing things in a new way that no one else has before. Not only does this research have the capacity to create groundbreaking solutions, but it also stands on the shoulders of its predecessors’ achievements. “There has been so much work done in medicine, drug discovery, computer science, biochemistry, and so many other fields of study, without which BEYOND would never have been possible. BEYOND builds on the work of thousands of scientists and doctors. Our hope is that BEYOND will be the next step in what has been an amazing millennia-long global effort to fight diseases like cancer and improve human lives,” says Frenkel.
Ten63 isn’t letting up when it comes to pursuing their mission: improve patient lives worldwide through innovation in life sciences research. It is not an easy road, but “the reward will make all our efforts worthwhile,” as said by Frenkel, who was inspired by a personal connection – he wanted better outcomes for people like his mother. With ambitions set high on exploring vast chemical spaces and building a global organization from within RTP’s vibrant life-sciences ecosystem, there’s yet to be a telling where they’ll go next.
If you’d like to learn more about TEN63, visit their official page at www.ten63tx.com today.
