Most families, like mine, have felt the crushing pain of finding out a loved one has an aggressive form of cancer. Or a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. This pain is compounded when you find out that, even with all the advancements in modern medicine, we can only attempt to excise or manage, but not fully treat these diseases.
What’s even more tragic is knowing that because of the progression of the disease, no treatment will exist in that loved one’s lifetime. It typically takes over 10 years and more than 10 billion dollars for pharma to bring a drug to market, with a dishearteningly low 3% probability of success.
Knowing all of this made meeting the Pepper Bio founders all the more special. Co-founded by Chief Executive Officer Jon Hu and Chief Science Officer Samantha Dale Strasser, Ph.D., Pepper Bio is bringing a new AI-enabled approach to drug discovery that de-risks drug investment in untreatable diseases.
The co-founders both lost loved ones to untreatable diseases. During her undergrad studies, Samantha learned that her father had an untreatable neurodegenerative disease. Because of this, she shifted her graduate studies to better align with researching the underlying cause of disease. Jon felt a similar pain when he lost his grandmother to Alzheimer’s.
The passion and dedication both founders have in altering the depressing status quo in drug development feels like a ray of hope in the darkness. It’s one of the reasons we’re so proud to partner with and invest in Pepper Bio.
How Pepper Bio Works And Why We Invested
Pepper Bio is the world's first transomics drug discovery company. Similar to how Google Maps combines various layers of data to provide the fastest and safest route to an end destination, Pepper Bio’s COMPASS platform simplifies the intricate world of biology into a navigable roadmap for researchers.
