Ignota Labs is taking a different approach to drug discovery. The Cambridge biotech combines mechanistic toxicology, multi-omics data, and explainable AI to understand why drugs fail and whether they can be re-engineered into potential new medicines.
We sat down with Dr Jordan Lane, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Ignota Labs, to talk about the company’s work, why Cambridge was the right place to grow, and how St John’s Innovation Centre is supporting its next stage.
A biochemist and geneticist, Jordan has a BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics and a PhD in Alzheimer’s disease. His career has taken him from academic research into biopharma and AI-driven drug discovery, with a focus on understanding the biology behind why medicines succeed or fail.
When failure isn’t the end
The starting point for Ignota Labs is the large number of promising drug programmes that stop because something goes wrong during development. As Jordan puts it, sometimes the problem is known, but the reason behind it is not: “We use an AI platform to understand when drugs hit safety problems or other development problems. A lot of the time, you get amorphous readouts in the clinic of raised liver enzymes. You don’t know what’s happened. You just know that they’ve caused toxicity.”
That is where Ignota Labs comes in, looking at the underlying biology to understand what has happened and whether the problem can be solved. The team has built a pipeline of promising drugs, including treatments for autoimmune disease and blood cancers.
“What we do is try to understand what has happened and why. And if we can understand it, we then acquire the asset, develop new chemistry and ultimately look to bring value back into that programme.
“We’ve acquired assets at attractive valuations, turned them around and shown that we can identify what has gone wrong and why. We are now progressing towards potential transactions on the pipeline.”
The ambition is to develop a business where promising assets can move through that process continuously, rather than being written off when an initial development programme fails.
“In five years, I would like to have a pipeline of assets where we’re constantly acquiring and progressing them, creating a new opportunity for assets that might otherwise be discarded.”
Cambridge is about people
Ignota Labs started in London, where its first investor provided office space, but as the company developed, the question became where it could find the specialist people needed to build the business.
“When looking at where we actually wanted to scale the company and where the talent was, Cambridge is a unique blend of tech, AI and drug discovery, and biology talent.”
That combination is particularly important for a company working across disciplines. The team has now grown from six to 12, making recruitment one of the biggest priorities.
“Recruitment is super important. It’s one of the biggest factors to make sure you get the right team behind you early on.”
Cambridge also offers something that can be reassuring for people considering joining a young company: a deep pool of other employers working in related fields.
“In a fast-moving ecosystem like Cambridge, the downside risk is quite low. You can join an exciting startup and take that risk, but there are so many other Cambridge biotechs around you that, even if things don’t work out, you are not necessarily facing relocation or a long period without work.”
For scientists thinking about making the move from research into entrepreneurship, Jordan’s advice is straightforward: “Hire well and try to get the right people in early on.”
More than a place to work
As Ignota Labs grew, it needed a more flexible base. Moving to St John’s Innovation Centre gave the team the space to make the office their own while retaining room to expand.
“St John’s is a bit like moving into your first unfurnished flat. You have to buy your own furniture, but it’s a bit more grown up and it’s a bit more real because of it.”
That flexibility matters, but so does what happens outside the office. One connection through SJIC led to a much broader relationship with Tom Wells at fellow tenant member Frazier & Deeter, which is now Ignota Labs’s primary tax advisor. Jordan also points to the accessibility of the Centre’s leadership and the wider community around it: “Barnaby (Barnaby Perks, SJIC CEO) has been a great person to speak to and get to know, and we know there is a wealth of advice available to us as and when we need it.”
The same applies to the wider Cambridge community, whether that is meeting other founders and businesses through networking or, more recently, talking to Mayor Paul Bristow during his visit to SJIC.
“It’s nice to chat to other people and hear their stories,” says Jordan.
What makes Ignota Labs different?
There is no shortage of companies talking about AI and drug discovery. Ignota Labs’s proposition is more specific: combining advanced computational tools with biological understanding to tackle drug failure and accelerate the development of new and improved therapies.
Rather than starting again from scratch, a successfully re-engineered drug could potentially reach patients much sooner: “I think that Ignota Labs is unique within the ecosystem – a drug that was going to end up on the scrap heap could be helping patients within a year. Whereas if you were to start again, you probably wouldn’t be bringing something to market for the next seven years.”
The company is now entering a particularly interesting and important phase. With the pipeline progressing, Jordan leaves us with an exciting parting comment: “We’ve got some big news coming soon!”.
Follow Ignota Labs on LinkedIn to be the first to know.