PharmaShots Spotlight Interview: Dr. Jonathan Usuka on Multiomics as an Insight Engine for Drug Development

There is clear potential for multiomics data to advance many aspects of precision drug development, but context is key. In this Spotlight Interview with PharmaShots, Sapient’s Chief Business Officer, Dr. Jonathan Usuka, shares why the ability to generate large-scale datasets is only part of the challenge. In the excerpt below, he explains how as an Insight Engine for drug developers, Sapient has the ability to interpret that data to add the biological and patient context needed to move therapeutics forward, both in early and clinical phases of development.

“With Sapient and our work beyond the genome, which is focused on proteomics and metabolomics, we generate multiomics data and insights that help with all of the phases from early discovery through to clinical studies. Through proteomics, we are able to identify new drug targets, which is key for a number of companies today that are very focused on novel targets because they have novel chemistry that interacts with those targets. We’re also able to help in high throughput screening and the selection of the therapies that would knock out those targets or interact with those targets. Because we have radically raised the throughput and decreased turnaround time from when we get a sample to when a result is available, our mass spec-based proteomics capabilities are amenable to high throughput screening [of thousands of compounds] at that kind of pace.

Further, our method of proteomics is not limited to humans. There are a lot of other technologies which can only be used in human plasma. We’ve developed our technology to be species-agnostic so it works just as well with a sample from a mouse, a rat, or a non-human primate as it does with humans. That really helps with preclinical studies of toxicology, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, and especially helps a company to select the right dose for the clinic. And lastly, as we get into clinical trials, we are a biomarker discovery company – and one of the few companies that does metabolomics – so we are able to identify things that are going on in the cell that make a good signal to segment patients. Frequently we will put our own proprietary real-world data assets into the analysis so that a pharma or academic researcher gets a much more complete context of the disease state and how the patient would respond to therapy. Once you can segment patients reproducibly by something that is going on in their disease cells, then you are able to recruit the right patients into your clinical trial: those that will have a benefit from your therapy and not have a safety issue from potential toxicological events related to your therapy. And that helps you to improve the probability of success for that therapy.

So across the pharma value chain, Sapient’s proteomics and metabolomics methods and multomics data can be applied all the way from target ID and high throughput screening to preclinical development and then ultimately, to expedite clinical development.”

Watch the full interview below to hear the full discussion!