Intro to Modulus Therapeutics

Since the summer of 2021, we at Modulus have been hard at work inventing an entirely new way to design cell therapies. We’re hitting our stride and have major milestones just around the corner, so it’s a great time to share the Cliffs Notes version of Modulus.

What is the vision of Modulus?

We want to be the leader in cell therapy design, developing rational engineering strategies to dramatically improve the number, efficacy, and safety of cell therapies brought to market.

What is Modulus’ key insight?

There is huge potential for engineered cell therapies to address complex diseases such as solid tumors. Engineering, however, requires design rules, and knowing the design rules for cell therapies means understanding the relationships between cell engineering, cell biology, and cell context.

At Modulus, we are putting this inherently combinatorial discovery challenge front and center to learn those design rules and engineer cell therapies.

What does Modulus do?

Modulus is building a cell therapy design platform that uses the latest in functional genomics and machine learning to converge on high performing cell designs. Along the way, we’re amassing datasets that describe how a huge diversity of engineered cells behave. These datasets are training data for machine learning models that extract design rules to help inform subsequent design decisions.

What is Modulus’ product?

Leveraging our design platform, we will design cell therapy assets and work with downstream development partners to advance those candidates in the clinic and beyond.

Why now?

On the market side, pioneering companies have blazed the cell therapy development and regulatory path in blood cancers, but the traditional cell therapy approaches face strong headwinds in solid tumors. We foresee increasing market pull for new design approaches as many clinical trials read out in the coming 12–24 months.

On the technology side, not only do we now have an exciting convergence of machine learning and functional genomics techniques, but the cell therapy field is now mature enough that we can incorporate the learnings and best practices of the industry as we build novel design strategies.

What kinds of people would like working at Modulus?

We are not a traditional biotech company, nor do we aspire to be. If you like to think from first principles, take oblique strategies, and prioritize team objectives over individual ones, you’d fit right in.

What are the major goals of Modulus in the coming year?

We’re on the cusp of several key technical and commercial milestones, so keep an eye out for news from us in the coming months. Beyond that, we’re excited to launch our first internal discovery programs, continue to build out a world class team, and add to a growing sense of belief that our efforts will translate into patient impact.

Stay tuned for lots to come.