Biology Ideas That Billionaire Peter Thiel Thinks Are Worth Funding
Francie Diep
at 07:53 AM Feb 12 2015
Biology Ideas That Billionaire Peter Thiel Thinks Are Worth Funding
Genes, Proteins and More Inside of a Cell
Nicole Rager, U.S. National Science Foundation
Science // 

Investor Peter Thiel may be best known for founding PayPal and investing early in Facebook, but it seems he has a soft spot for biology too. Since 2011, the Thiel Foundation has funded biotechnology startups through an organization called Breakout Labs. The first startup the organization supported may seem a little light on "bio" to some—it worked on algorithms designed to understand natural human speech—but the latest round of Breakout Labs funding goes to folks with serious life-sciences ambitions.

 

Breakout Labs' latest investments, announced yesterday, include two companies dedicated to coming up with new ideas for man-made molecules that could work as medicines, plus one that seeks to measure how stressed people are through their skin. Each company has a long way to go before it can prove its ideas work. Breakout Labs is designed for super early-stage products. "They're often using our funds to help be their first step out of the university lab," Lindy Fishburne, Breakout Labs' executive director, tells Popular Science. Still, the companies provide a fascinating glimpse into some possible solutions to important problems in health and medicine today. Let's meet them:

Finding ways to drug "undruggable" diseases

Here's how many medicines work, at a molecular level: They seek out faulty proteins in the human body and latch onto them. By attaching to proteins that are behaving badly, drugs may inhibit the proteins from doing anything. Or drugs could stimulate them to work faster, if the proteins are helpful, but sluggish.

The problem is that most human proteins have surfaces that are nearly impossible for drugs molecules to attach to. Meanwhile, proteins that are easy targets already have drugs made for them. The result is a pharmaceutical industry that's spending extra money to try to crack tougher nuts, as Columbia University biologist Brent Stockwell argued in The Quest for the Cure, published in 2011.

Two of Breakout Labs' latest investments try to tackle these "undruggable" proteins.

E3X Bio, based in Menlo Park, aims at proteins called E3 ubiquitin ligases. They're about as unapproachable as their name. Scientists know faulty E3 ubiquitin ligases are involved in a myriad of diseases, including cancers, certain brain diseases, and autoimmune diseases. But they seem particularly difficult for drug molecules to get a hold of.

E3X Bio is working on an "easy-to-run, easy-to-interpret" test to find unicorn chemicals that are able to interact with E3 ubiquitin ligases, says Lori Rafield, the company's CEO.

Meanwhile, the folks at Ion Dx are working on a tabletop device for studying proteins. If it works, such a device could help scientists find those weak spots in proteins that are open to drug attachment. The device will use an altered version of ion mobility spectrometry, the technology that works inside the machines the TSA uses to look for explosive chemicals at the airport.

Adding a stress measure to your Fitbit

Neumitra of Boston now makes a "biowatch" that measures movement, body temperature, and the electrical activity of your skin. Together, such measures are supposed to tell you how stressed you're feeling. It's basically a Fitbit for stress.

As interesting as that sounds, however, it turned out that not many people were willing to wear yet another device to measure their stress, Neumitra founder Robert Goldberg told Popular Science over email. So Neumitra asked Breakout Labs for funding to create a chip that could put Neumitra's abilities into other devices—perhaps your actual activity tracker. No word on how they're going to manage to get the chip in these devices, though.

You can get funding, too!

Breakout Labs is still seeking ideas to invest in, and anyone can apply. The first step is to submit an application online. "Everybody starts on an even playing field in the sense that they're coming through the website, so it's not about who you know," Fishburne says. "We help provide their link into the funding community."

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