Who I'm Reading Today

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/where-are-they-now-verge-genomics

I’ve kicked around the idea of doing some “Where Are They Now” posts here, and I think that this is as good an occasion as any. Back in 2018, I wrote about a new company called Verge Genomics that was using AI/ML methods to go after neuroscience targets like ALS, and my eye was caught by statements like “Instead of tediously screening millions of drugs, the algorithm will computationally predict drugs that work” and “We've discovered a way to map out the hundreds of genes that cause a disease, and then find drugs that target all the genes at once”

As you’ll see from that post, I was indeed skeptical, not least because connecting genomics with small-molecule drug discovery is hard and connecting genomics with neurodegenerative disease is really hard, too. So multiplying those two together did not, to me, seem to give much room for optimism. But optimism was definitely what Verge was selling back then, and I did wish them luck, with the proviso that they were certainly going to need it.

That luck has run out. Endpoints reports that the company’s only clinical candidate in ALS (VRG50635) has failed in a Phase Ib trial. That was a PIKfyve inhibitor, targeting a phosphoinositide kinase with a great many cellular functions. It’s been of interest in oncology, infectious disease, diabetes, and several other conditions besides, and Verge helped identify it as an ALS target as well. Work has been going on for some years around the industry on inhibitors of that enzyme (which include apilimod, referenced here during the pandemic). Another small company, Acurastem, is continuing their own work on PIVfyve and ALS, and I can only wish them better fortune.

Verge, though, is now shutting down all their own drug discovery efforts and switching (they hope) to a partnership mode with their technology. It appears from the article that a lot of the company’s management has left in the last few months, and I’m not sure how many scientists are still at the company at this point. It looks like they’ve auctioned off all of the lab hardware, right down to the water purification equipment.

And that news (from October) is particularly grim when you contrast it with this publicity piece from the Chinese news site 36Kr. That one came out about a week before the equipment auction started, but you’d never know that anything like that was in the works - it’s all dynamic leadership, paradigm-busting science, lists of accomplishments and milestones and partnerships and funding. In that PR-drenched world, VRG50635 is “bringing new hope to millions of patients around the world”. The Chinese-intensive focus of the 36Kr piece goes out of its way to emphasize that Verge is not slowing itself down by trying to do only partnerships - no, they’re going it alone and making “world-class original breakthroughs”. You can’t believe everything you read, folks. Especially not gauzy publicity writeups.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/where-are-they-now-verge-genomics