Verseon


Verseon Corporation is an American pharmaceutical company based in Fremont, California. It was founded in 2002 by Adityo Prakash, Eniko Fodor, and David Kita, who created the company's proprietary physics-based computational drug discovery platform. In 2017 Verseon's drug discovery platform was named as one of the Financial Times' '50 Ideas to Change the World'. High-profile members of Verseon's scientific advisory board include Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former US energy secretary, and John Leonard, former Chief Scientific Officer of AbbVie Inc.

Drug discovery platform

Verseon's drug discovery platform is able to create a library of virtual drug-like compounds, as well as accurately model ligand/receptor interactions in silico, and so predict how drug-like molecules will interact with disease proteins. This results in large number of novel compounds with higher affinity for their targets. This kind of physics-based molecular modelling platform could be a new way for the pharmaceutical industry to discover drugs. Currently, most drugs are discovered using the high-throughput screening method.

Stock market listing

Verseon completed a £300m stock exchange listing on the London Alternative Investment Market in 2015, with backing from several major UK investors, including Neil Woodford.
In December 2019, after obtaining stockholder approval, Verseon returned to private ownership.

Drug pipeline

Verseon is currently pursuing drug programs in anticoagulation, diabetic macular edema, hereditary angioedema, and oncology. Preclinical tests have found that Verseon's novel anticoagulant compounds prevent thrombosis while preserving platelet function, meaning they are associated with significantly lower bleeding times than other currently approved anticoagulants dabigatran, argatroban or apixaban. None of Verseon's compounds have yet been validated in clinical trials.