Meliora Therapeutics is applying modern machine learning methods to develop a first-of-its-kind atlas of drug mechanisms and their impact on cancer biology. We leverage this target-agnostic mechanism-of-action atlas to identify potent compounds that inhibit key cancer targets, ultimately allowing us to develop better cancer therapies.

We are creating a first-of-its-kind atlas mapping drug mechanisms and their impact on cancer biology. We capture drug activity at the molecular, protein, cellular, as well as organismal level, and transform these different data modalities in a standardized, digital format. Instead of relying on short-form proxies of cell function, AnchorOmics enables a digitized language that captures the full complexity of cellular function. The underlying unit of this language is our proprietary molecular fingerprint. This fingerprint captures the impact of a therapeutic agent on cellular function as represented by the transcriptome, methylome, proteome, morphological state, and more. We use advanced machine learning techniques to generate each perturbation’s fingerprint, and locate that fingerprint in our atlas, thus mapping an anti-cancer drug’s mechanisms of action. Fundamentally, AnchorOmics allows Meliora to combine insights from a wide range of modalities into a single vector space atlas.

The AnchorOmics atlas can be leveraged as a proprietary prediction engine to identify the true MOA of molecules of interest. By pattern matching the molecular fingerprint of a molecule of interest back on the reference atlas of AnchorOmics, we can identify compelling starting points for drug discovery programs. This robust platform allows Meliora to nominate drug scaffolds for future development, cutting out a large and expensive phase of the drug development process.