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For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn\u2019t isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s and eventually patented its modified version as Aspirin<\/a>.<\/p>\n Aspirin is just one example of a medicine derived from natural sources. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that around 40% of modern pharmaceutical products<\/a> have roots in remedies used by our ancestors.<\/p>\n Even with this impressive success of harnessing nature\u2019s bounty, scientists estimate that they discovered only a tiny fraction of natural chemical compounds that could be developed into powerful medicines.<\/p>\n In part that\u2019s because identifying, isolating and testing molecules from nature is complex and more time-consuming than synthesizing new compounds in a lab.<\/p>\n Viswa Colluru, an early employee of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which went public in 2021, decided that AI and other techniques can expedite the process of discovering new medicines from nature.<\/p>\n In 2019, Colluru left Recursion to start Enveda Biosciences, a Boulder, Colo.-based biotech that analyzes plant chemistry to unearth potential medicines.<\/p>\n Colluru told TechCrunch that Enveda tapped all of the world\u2019s digital information about how humans across cultures have used plants to cure pain and disease.<\/p>\n \u201cWe discovered that geographically separated cultures from across the world were much more likely to use similar plants for similar diseases and symptoms, even though they never talked to each other,\u201d he said. \u201cThey discovered that a certain plant helps stomach ache, or a certain plant helps like a fever or a headache, and that is literally thousands\u00a0 of years of experiential human wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, the company\u2019s database has 38,000 medicinal plants linked to about 12,000 diseases and symptoms.<\/p>\n Once Enveda\u2019s AI identifies plants with the highest likelihood of providing cures, it gathers the materials and tests them using the company\u2019s AI model. Unlike traditional methods for studying individual molecules, Enveda\u2019s transformer model can decipher the \u201cchemical language\u201d of the entire sample.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we know their shape, we can prioritize the right sets of molecules and say, this will one day be a medicine,\u201d Colluru said.<\/p>\n Enveda\u2019s approach is starting to bear fruit. Two of the company\u2019s drugs\u2014one for treating eczema and the other for inflammatory bowel diseases\u2014are expected to begin clinical trials later this year, according to Colluru.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s scientific progress has attracted the attention of investors. On Thursday, Enveda announced that it has raised a $55 million Series B extension from new investors, including Microsoft, The Nature Conservancy, Premji Invest and Lingotto Investment Fund, and existing backers Kinnevik, True Ventures, FPV, Level Ventures and Jazz Venture Partners. The fresh funding brings the company\u2019s total capital to $230 million.<\/p>\n The extension round allows Enveda to add long-term strategic partners to its cap table, and the company plans to raise a Series C later this year after the start of clinical trials, Colluru said.<\/p>\n Microsoft is also providing some cloud credits as part of the deal, but this is separate from its cash investment, according to Colluru.\u00a0<\/p>\n While sampling plants to find medicines is an age-old approach, Enveda is one of the few companies doing this with AI\u2019s help. UK-based Pangea Bio is also studying plants to discover drugs for treating neurological conditions.<\/p>\n Of course, much of the attention in this field has gone to marijuana and the natural sources are best known for having produced psilocybin in so-called \u201cmagic mushrooms\u201d or other psychedelics<\/a> that have the potential to cure mental health disorders, but Enveda is not interested in studying their compounds.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody is focused on cannabis and psychedelics, which are just a tiny fraction of the natural world,\u201d\u00a0 Colluru said. \u201cThe natural world is so rich in its chemical diversity and biological effects that studying just a few 100 plants is enough to give so many potential drugs that we don\u2019t know what to do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n