Sinopia Biosciences has received a $2.5 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, to advance an AI-powered metabolomics foundation model for drug discovery.
The award will support development and validation of a model designed to integrate metabolomics data generated across different experimental platforms, analytical methods, laboratories, and studies. Sinopia plans to incorporate the technology into its proprietary LEADS platform, which combines multi-omics data, high-throughput screening, and AI and machine learning.
Metabolomics provides information about cellular physiology and biological responses to drugs, but differences in experimental platforms and data-processing methods can make datasets difficult to compare directly. Sinopia is developing the foundation model to learn shared biological patterns across varied datasets so researchers can interpret new experiments and identify mechanisms, targets, and compounds more consistently.
The Phase II work builds on Sinopia’s earlier metabolomics model development and profiling programs involving small molecules targeting more than 1,000 proteins across multiple cellular contexts. Under the new grant, the company plans to add proprietary and public datasets, expand drug-perturbation profiling, and test the model’s ability to identify novel therapeutic targets and compounds in preclinical disease models.
Sinopia said its LEADS platform has already produced SB-0110, a novel PKA-II modulator in late-stage preclinical development for Parkinson’s disease. SB-0110 remains investigational, and the company will need additional preclinical and clinical development before any potential regulatory approval or commercial use.
KEY QUOTES:
“Sinopia was founded on the belief that integrating rich multi-omics data and AI can reveal therapeutic opportunities that conventional drug discovery approaches may miss. This Phase II award will strengthen a critical component of our LEADS platform, enabling us to leverage a much broader range of metabolomics data to uncover novel disease biology and therapeutic opportunities. Our goal is to translate these discoveries into a broader pipeline of first-in-class therapies across diseases where patients need better options.”
Aarash Bordbar, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer And Co-Founder Of Sinopia Biosciences
“We are developing a metabolomics foundation model designed to address this challenge by facilitating comparison and integration of data from different sources. The goal is not simply to combine more data, but to build a model that can learn shared biological patterns across diverse metabolomics datasets and use that knowledge to interpret new experiments, identify common mechanisms, and uncover new opportunities for drug discovery.”
Bernard Bloem, Ph.D., Principal Investigator Of The Award
