The $1B Search for Hidden Plant Drugs

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

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*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 Colluru*
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/viswacolluru
X: https://x.com/viswacolluru

*Resources and episode mentions*
*—Books—*
• Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone: https://www.amazon.com/Hit-Refresh-Rediscover-Microsofts-Everyone-ebook/dp/B01HOT5SQA
• The World of the Cell: https://www.amazon.com/World-Cell-7th-Wayne-Becker/dp/0805393935
• String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis: A Library of America Special Publication: https://www.amazon.com/String-Theory-Wallace-Library-Publication/dp/1598534807
• The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life: https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Question-Evolution-Origins-Complex/dp/0393088812

*—People—*
• Satya Nadella on X: https://x.com/satyanadella
• Pablo Lubroth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablolubroth
• David Foster Wallace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace
• Chris Gibson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-gibson-5ab66065

*—Other resources—*
• Enveda: https://enveda.com
• Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21845-chronic-myelogenous-leukemia-cml
• Gleevec: https://www.novartis.com/us-en/content/gleevec%C2%AE-tablets
• The Moat of Low Status: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/the-moat-of-low-status-68a
• Learn to love the Moat of Low Status: https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/learn-to-love-the-moat-of-low-status
• Roger Federer vs Pete Sampras | Wimbledon 2001 fourth round | Full Match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uJ2IyL0cPc• Goliath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath
• Recursion: https://www.recursion.com
• Celebrating the Departure of an Outstanding Employee (Chris Gibson’s post about Viswa): https://medium.com/recursion-pharmaceuticals/celebrating-the-departure-of-an-outstanding-employee-65db2455fd1f
• Silk Road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
...Resources continued at: https://www.generalist.com/p/the-future-of-drug-discovery

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