ABOUT ABILITA BIO

Abilita Bio, Inc. was founded in June 2014 and is an innovation-driven biotechnology company focused on enabling discovery and development of drugs targeting challenging membrane proteins, including G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) and ion channels.

The Basics Of Our Business

  • Almost all drugs target proteins

  • 60% of approved drugs target membrane proteins

  • Most of these drugs have limited selectivity, meaning they act on more than one protein and may cause undesirable effects

  • Many of these drugs have been around for years, and it’s hard to develop better ones

  • There is a high need for new, effective, and safer drugs to treat diseases like cancer, diabetes, inflammation and neurology

  • To facilitate the discovery of new drugs, scientists need to be able to work with stable membrane proteins

  • Purifying membrane proteins can be very challenging, mostly because they are hydrophobic (water-hating) and/or extremely flexible

  • We use cells to determine which protein building blocks to change to make working with membrane proteins easier

  • We license this technology to other companies, and also use it to discover our own drug candidates

A Few More Details

Due to their intrinsic hydrophobic nature and inherent flexibility, working with certain classes of membrane proteins can be exceptionally difficult, which has greatly limited the success of developing drugs to target them.
Molecular heterogeneity and low stability can be enhanced through improvements of wild type receptors, while maintaining relevant biology. Abilita Bio employs a proprietary technology platform based on a mutational approach, which allows for fast and efficient identification of mutation sets inducing substantial enhancements over wild type receptors.

We call these enhanced molecules ENABLED MEMBRANE PROTEINS (EMPs™)

Abilita Bio is a privately held company and owns all the rights to the EMPs™ technology. We were funded through an initial angel round in February 2015 and have established several global collaborations around the EMP™ platform, including a multi-target proof of concept agreement with an undisclosed global pharmaceutical company. We seek to further expand our network of collaborations and research agreements with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
About Us | Our Team | Scientific Advisory Board | Executive Advisory Board
Menu