The principals of Talus Bioscience Inc. are building new technologies to drug transcription factors and other gene regulators. The effort is to revolutionize drug development for gene regulators by enabling the ability to study gene regulatory proteins (GRPs) in a living cell environment. A venture-backed early-stage biotechnology startup company, Talus spun out of two leading institutions in September 2020 (University of Washington and Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences) with the organizing principle being to build a data-enabled drug development platform focused primarily on small-molecule drug development in oncology. The firm's platform is structured around being able to measure a drugs ability to disrupt a gene regulator within its natural, non-engineered cellular environment. By combining innovative cell processing with high-sensitivity quantitative proteomics and advanced downstream analytics, a single experiment - using the platform - can measure activity for about 1,000 gene regulators simultaneously, providing information on in-cell drug activity and specificity in a single experiment. Overall the firm is targeted towards a. developing internal programs against previously undruggable gene regulators in cancers with poor standard of care b. partnering with pharma, biotech, and academic labs to help progress their pipeline of gene regulator drugs
