“We are moving toward a world where the odds in drug discovery can be flipped”
While etiology and pathophysiology of most diseases are still poorly understood, there has never been a better time to fix this. We spoke with Thore on November 20, 2024, following his talk at the idalab Seminar about Pheiron's approach for identifying targets and de-risking translation using human multi-omics data and AI.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Thore Buergel, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO Pheiron
What motivated you to start Pheiron together with your co-founder Jakob Steinfeldt?
Today, drug development still feels like flying blind. We have some understanding of what happens in disease, but we are often not able to pinpoint the driving mechanisms for complex diseases. Even when we know some mechanisms, we lack the tools to assess the profile of a patient to understand which mechanisms are driving their disease.
This limited understanding affects everything, whether it is generating actionable insights, identifying disease mechanisms that can be translated into drugs or connecting those drugs to the right patients.
How can we improve our understanding of these links between disease mechanisms, drugs and patient profiles?
Today, there is strong evidence for the potential of genetics in driving more effective and targeted drug development [1]–[3]. If you have genetic evidence supporting a specific mechanism, it significantly boosts success rates by 2-4x. Drugs backed by human genetic evidence are also 2x less likely to have critical safety effects in late-stage trials. Combine that with strategies for targeted patient selection, and you can not only link mechanisms to diseases but also identify exactly which patients will benefit. That is another major boost in success rates.
That is based on data from programs that started 10 or 15 years ago. The question then becomes: what is the real potential here? There are papers that simulate these scenarios and what they show is that causally linking mechanisms to outcomes could change everything [4].
So we are moving toward a world where the odds in drug discovery can be flipped; by putting human evidence first to identify mechanisms and connecting them to patients who can benefit. But building these links is not trivial.
What is your approach at Pheiron to tackle this challenge?
Our thesis is that multi-omics data will follow the path of commoditization. Across the globe, we already have biobank data with biological samples like blood, urine, and saliva from over 7 million individuals and this will keep growing. Take for example newer research biobanks like the UK’s Our Future Health, which plans to fully integrate whole-genome sequencing with longitudinal health records for 5 million individuals in a single dataset.
So we believe there is an opportunity for a vertically integrated approach, from discovery to the clinic. By leveraging large datasets, we can better understand disease mechanisms along the way and link those insights to specific patients.
This is essentially what we do in our projects: moving from the mechanism to the drug and then to the right patient profile. Or we have the same question but flipped: figuring out the connection between specific phenotypes and what can help tackle those.
Buergel, T.M. and Steinfeldt, J., 2024. The GPS for drug development: navigating with evidence from human populations. Trends in Biotechnology, 42(8), pp.1064-1065.
What are the key challenges for you at the moment?
Everything! (laughs)
Currently, one of our priorities is the ongoing integration and harmonization of multi-omics data. This allows us to build our infrastructure on top and train models to pinpoint mechanisms and create patient profiles.
We are also thinking a lot about niches where proprietary data collection makes sense for leveraging existing datasets.
With your academic track record, you could have also pursued a career in academia. What made you decide to start your own company instead?
I don't think the best research happens in academia.
At the core, academia often lacks aligned incentives. If you want to solve challenging problems, you need 100% alignment – and I don’t know a better way to do that than with a cap table.
Starting as a service provider in pharma/biotech is often challenging – any tactics you could share?
We started with traction, as we had tested our concepts in publications and were able to establish first partnerships early on, for example with Ribocure Pharmaceuticals.
I think this is the path forward for us: everything we deliver must show measurable impact, as building trust and credibility are key for us. Our projects are all designed to achieve quick results that pave the way for longer collaborations.
Also of course, being able to name customers and working directly with decision-makers who can act on what you find is critical.
Looking beyond Pheiron, what will it take to strengthen the Berlin biotech ecosystem?
The U.S. leads biotech, especially in capital and scale, and most of our work is with companies based in the U.S. or across the EU. That said, we were able to build a strong team in Berlin, including people who moved here from the UK and US to join us.
Going forward, our trajectory will depend on access to top talent and capital – and I think strengthening these two pillars is key for Berlin as well.
Thore, thank you for this fascinating conversation.
My pleasure.
References
[1] Minikel, E.V., Painter, J.L., Dong, C.C. and Nelson, M.R., 2024. Refining the impact of genetic evidence on clinical success. Nature, 629(8012), pp.624-629.
[2] Minikel, E.V. and Nelson, M.R., 2025. Human genetic evidence enriched for side effects of approved drugs. PLoS Genetics, 21(3), p.e1011638.
[3] Razuvayevskaya, O., Lopez, I., Dunham, I. and Ochoa, D., 2024. Genetic factors associated with reasons for clinical trial stoppage. Nature Genetics, 56(9), pp.1862-1867.
[4] Hingorani, A.D., Kuan, V., Finan, C., Kruger, F.A., Gaulton, A., Chopade, S., Sofat, R., MacAllister, R.J., Overington, J.P., Hemingway, H. and Denaxas, S., 2017. Flipping the odds of drug development success through human genomics. bioRxiv, p.170142.
About Thore
Thore Buergel studied Molecular Biotechnology and Bioinformatics at the University of Heidelberg, before completing his PhD at the Berlin Institute of Health. In 2023, Thore co-founded Pheiron, an AI-native biotech innovating at the intersection of multi-omic disease understanding and genetics to advance next-generation therapeutics.
About the idalab Seminar
This interview is part of our idalab Seminar series, which we host every two months at our office in Berlin. We invite practitioners, entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers to reflect on their work at the intersection of AI, Life Science, and Healthcare. Subscribe to our newsletter for priority invitations.