Ditto Bio recently launched!

^{‍
"Ditto Bio discovers new drugs by harnessing parasite biology."}

^{TLDR; Ditto Bio transforms parasite strategies for hacking the immune system into breakthrough drugs for autoimmune disease.}

‍

Viruses, ticks, and worms are the natural enemies of the human immune system. Over millions of years of experimentation, they've developed extraordinarily effective molecules to prevent your immune system from attacking them. This makes their proteins ideal drug candidates for autoimmune diseases, where a hyperactive immune system attacks the body's own tissues. Ditto Bio is mining the genomes of these organisms to translate these naturally occurring drugs into novel therapies.

‍

https://youtu.be/4QFngdirw58

‍

‍

Founded by Adair Borges, Dennis Sun & Emily Weiss

Meet Adair Borges, Dennis Sun, and Emily Weiss, the founders of Ditto Bio.

‍

The founders believe the world's best immunologists live inside of you.

‍

The Team

The founders are three PhD scientists trained at top institutions (Harvard, Berkeley, UCSF, UCSD) with 40+ years of experience in computational biology, host-parasite interactions, and evolution. They worked together for 3 years as early scientists at another startup before founding Ditto.

‍

The Problem

90% of drugs fail in clinical trials, when they are tested in humans for the first time. These failures come after companies invest 3-5 years and $15-20M “derisking” drugs in cells and mice. Everyone knows that cells and mice aren’t people, but without a smarter strategy, billions of dollars will continue to be wasted making drugs that will never reach patients.

‍

The Ditto Approach

Ditto Bio starts with molecules that already work in humans. Parasites have been running experiments on people for millions of years, creating powerful molecules to control the human immune system. The Ditto AI platform identifies drug-like proteins from these organisms at scale, which the team then engineers into safe, effective therapeutics.

‍

The Best Drugs Come from Nature

Aspirin, penicillin, Botox, and GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic and Wegovy all originated as molecules from other organisms: aspirin from willow bark, penicillin from mold, and GLP-1 agonists from Gila monster venom. At Ditto Bio, they're establishing parasites as the next transformative source of therapeutics.

‍

Their Data Moat

Since founding seven months ago, they've analyzed 1M+ proteins across primate-infecting viruses, ticks, and parasitic worms. The founders have discovered thousands of proteins predicted to hit clinically validated human targets. Early experiments show that they have surfaced an untapped source of new drugs that act on high-value targets for immune diseases. Their proteins can achieve extremely tight binding (1–2 nM), among other drug-like properties.

They’re also building a tissue biobank that lets them map real-world immune memory to parasite proteins. This approach gives Ditto a major advantage in tackling one of the biggest barriers facing all novel protein therapeutics: predicting and designing around immunogenicity.

The opportunity is vast: >98% of viral and parasite proteins remain uncharacterized. At Ditto Bio, they're systematically mining this unexplored biology at scale to find and deploy nature’s best drugs.

Learn More

^‍

^{🌐 Visit www.dittobio.com to learn more.}

^‍

^{🤝 If you’re an industry immunologist, biologics drug developer, or protein designer, please reach out to the founders 📧 here to learn where their novel targets, natural scaffolds, and immunogenicity assays could make a difference for your drug programs.}

^‍

^{👣 Follow Ditto Bio on LinkedIn & X.}

‍