⚛️ Lavo Life Sciences - Computer simulations of drug molecules

TL;DR

Lavo Life Sciences runs simulations of drug molecules on computers. Pharma companies use our simulations to guide their experiments, saving hundreds of millions of dollars and years of time in the lab. This will de-risk clinical trials and expedite FDA approval.

This is what a pill looks like at the molecular level. Drug molecules pack into repeating patterns–or “crystal structures”–which control the drug’s stability. This particular drug (Ritonavir) was recalled when the developers chose an unstable crystal structure. This recall could have been avoided with effective simulation.

🤔 The Problem

Lavo’s simulation software predicts the crystal structure of drug molecules. The crystal structure refers to the three-dimensional pattern in which individual molecules pack to form a solid. Choosing the best crystal structure before clinical trials maximizes the efficacy, shelf-stability, and safety of the drug. Failure to accurately determine the crystal structure can lead to problems in manufacturing, legal protection of the drug patent, and success in clinical trials.

From conversations with pharma companies, we’ve learned that they want more of these predictions, but existing vendors are too slow and expensive–think hundreds of thousands of computer hours for a single molecule. This is a limitation of their methodology and is also our key differentiator.

This market is large and growing. 15,000 relevant drugs enter R&D each year, and pharma companies spend over $100M on crystal structure predictions annually. Also, we have learned that pharma companies need predictions on larger drugs than are currently possible with today's methods, so we have an opportunity to expand the market with more efficient products.

🔨 Why now, why us?

We are uniquely positioned to solve this problem – Zach and Derek have PhDs in computational chemistry and Scott is a former Google Cloud PM. We are prepared to tackle this scientific challenge at an industrial scale.

💡 Our Solution

We started working on this problem 4 months ago and our simulations are already 10x faster than current methods

We use AI and quantum chemistry algorithms to improve every step of the crystal structure prediction workflow:

• We use custom algorithms to quickly get an understanding of the landscape of possible crystals.
• We use AI to accurately rank crystal structures 100x faster than traditional techniques
• We scale our software on the cloud to achieve rapid turnaround times.

❤️ Our Asks

We are interested in meeting people in the pharma industry. Please email founders@lavo.ai to connect with us!

Thanks,

Scott, Zach, and Derek