Empowered Patient Podcast

Ed Esquenazi, Founder and CEO of Sirenas, is exploring the chemistry of marine organisms to accelerate drug discovery. Marine-based scientific elements are still poorly understood but have the potential to produce unique and useful compounds for drug development. There are stark differences between land-based organisms and marine-based organisms, which have evolved for much longer and, therefore, offer more diverse and complex chemistry. Using AI and machine learning, Sirenas has identified cancer-killing agents, anti-infective agents, and anti-inflammatory compounds from marine organisms and is developing marine-based personal care products.  Ed explains, "We go out into the ocean, collect samples, we bring them back. We understand the different chemistry being produced in these organisms, identify and catalog it very carefully using instrumentation, and then figure out how that chemistry might impact biological systems, all with the goal of accelerating drug discovery. So the goal is to make the chemistry f