Octant

Octant engineers human cells to understand biochemical mechanisms that link genetics to disease. Referred to as “cellular intelligence”, Octant hopes to use this information to engineer next-generation small molecule therapeutics. Genetic and clinical data collection has become easier and cheaper, but more data alone is insufficient to understand biochemical mechanisms of disease. To identify targets to drug for complex diseases, Octant is using a four-component platform: (1) high-throughput synthetic biology to engineer millions of cell lines, (2) high throughput chemistry to explore compounds that tune biochemical pathways, (3) multiplexed assays to test thousands of combinations of their engineered cells and chemicals, and (4) bioinformatics and software techniques to analyze data.