Vividion launches out of Scripps

Vividion Therapeutics has launched based on small-molecule drug discovery technology from three Scripps Research Institute scientists. Backed by $50 million in venture capital funding, Vividion combines a platform for proteome-wide ligand and target discovery from Benjamin F. Cravatt with synthetic chemistry from Phil S. Baran and Jin-Quan Yu. Much drug discovery involves screening of compound libraries using a single target-specific assay. Vividion, in contrast, evaluates compounds in native biological systems, such as human immunocytes and cancer cell lines, so promising protein-ligand interactions are identified amid the entire proteome and in the context of actual protein function.