"Most often, we tend to conflate innovation and novelty. But if I look around, most things that have changed the fabric of our lived experience were actually not new when they did." — Viswa Colluru
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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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Explore the episode
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
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
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
Artemisinin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisinin
GW Pharmaceuticals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW_Pharmaceuticals
Cannabidiol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol
CERN: https://home.cern
GWAS: https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genome-Wide-Association-Studies-GWAS
Charlie Munger’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8690661-take-a-simple-idea-and-take-it-seriously
Modern drug discovery using ethnobotany: A large-scale cross-cultural analysis of traditional medicine reveals common therapeutic uses: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37701812
Analysis of virus genomes from glacial environments reveals novel virus groups with unusual host interactions: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4490671/
Rinvoq: https://www.rinvoqhcp.com
Dupixent: https://www.dupixent.com
Humira: https://www.humira.com
Singulair: https://www.drugs.com/singulair.html
Eli Lilly: https://www.lilly.com
Keytruda: https://www.keytruda.com
Merck: https://www.merck.com
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