The Future Of Drug Discovery Is 4 Billion Years Old (Viswa Colluru, Founder & CEO at Enveda)

For decades, drug discovery has shifted away from nature and toward biology-first approaches. Viswa Colluru believes that shift was a catastrophic mistake. His company, Enveda Biosciences, has raised over $500 million to build a “search engine for nature’s chemistry.” The mission is personal: he grew up around his father’s pharmacy in India and later lost his mother to a treatable cancer whose medicine his family couldn’t afford. Many life-changing medicines, including morphine, aspirin, and metformin, originated in nature, but there has never been a reliable, scalable way to systematically explore its chemistry. Colluru founded Enveda in 2019 with $55,000 of his own savings to change that. The company has since identified 18 drug candidates, with three now in clinical trials.In our conversation, we explore:• Why the pharmaceutical industry abandoned nature (and why that was a massive mistake)• How Enveda built a system to decode unknown molecules in nature• The deeply personal story of his mother’s battle with leukemia and how it shaped his life’s work• Why old ideas, from immunotherapy to natural products, often hold the most latent potential• How Enveda developed 18 drug candidates for about $1 million each instead of $10-15 million• Enveda’s three leading drug candidates targeting eczema, obesity, and ulcerative colitis• Why first-in-class medicines capture the vast majority of returns in pharma• What competitive table tennis taught him about building companies—Thank you to the partners who make this possibleBrex: The intelligent finance platform.Ahrefs Brand Radar: Find your brand in AI results.Persona: Trusted identity verification for any use case.—Transcript: https://www.generalist.com/p/the-future-of-drug-discovery—Timestamps(00:00) Introduction to Viswa Colluru(03:57) His father’s pharmacy and early exposure to Western and Ayurvedic medicine(07:06) Early pull toward technology(09:29) His mother’s leukemia diagnosis(14:24) Studying Biotechnology(16:07) Graduate school(17:55) Studying immunotherapy when it was unfashionable(24:23) Innovation vs. novelty(27:24) Lessons from table tennis(32:05) Joining Recursion(37:10) Learning urgency and courage(40:42) What launched Enveda(45:40) The limits of reductionist drug discovery(49:53) Chemistry-first approach(52:17) Raising $225K and investing $55K personally(56:04) Initial studies and targets(1:04:30) Three categories of leading drugs: Eczema, obesity, ulcerative colitis(1:13:27) Why GLP-1s are not the whole answer(1:18:27) Enveda’s long-term vision(1:21:31) Book recommendation—Follow Viswa ColluruLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/viswacolluruX: https://x.com/viswacolluru—Resources and episode mentions: https://www.generalist.com/p/the-future-of-drug-discovery—Production and marketing by penname.co. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.generalist.com/subscribe