Parabilis Medicines
“Our science is groundbreaking, and our mission is inspiring, but I think it’s our team that really sets us apart. The dedication and camaraderie I see every day motivates me to be the best version of myself.” Tara Travaline Scientist I
About Parabilis Medicines
Formerly known as Fog Pharmaceuticals, Parabilis Medicines was founded in 2015 to address a fundamental gap in modern drug development: the great progress that has been made in identifying human disease targets has not been matched by advances in the ability to develop medicines for them.
For decades, many promising disease targets were dismissed by the drug discovery industry because they were viewed as “undruggable” — unable to be targeted by conventional drug modalities such as small molecules or biologics. The explanation for this appeared straightforward: many proteins exist inside the cell, and are thus inaccessible to traditional biologics, but also lack the deep pockets typically required for selective and potent binding by cell-penetrant small molecules.
But this explanation ignored the fact that there did exist certain drugs that can enter cells and bind the flat surfaces of challenging protein targets: macrocyclic natural products such as cyclosporine A were proof that the challenge could be overcome. The question was how to learn from nature’s example and develop a means of discovering such drugs — without requiring millions of years of natural evolution to do so.