
Unleashing the medicinal power of plants
For thousands of years, humans have relied on the medicinal properties of plants to cure, treat, and prevent diseases. Today, most of our medicines still come from nature. However, cultivating plant crops for drugs is a slow, inefficient and risk-laden process, dependent on the whims of climate, skills of farmers, and a seasonal supply chain.
Because entire plants must be grown just to extract one or two molecules, our current system wastes enormous natural resources and reduces biodiversity though overharvesting. It also creates inequitable distribution models; i.e., costly drugs only go to people and countries that can afford them.
This isn’t good medicine for people or our planet.
Our approach
At Antheia, we’re taking a new approach to creating both existing and new medicines. Our novel approach to bioengineering reconstructs plant-inspired molecules in yeast to achieve the complexity and diversity found in nature.
Whole Cell Engineering (WCE)
Yeast can be engineered to perform biosynthetic pathways, converting sugars and amino acids into more complex molecules. But the complexity of those molecules is constrained by existing synthetic biology methods. A new approach – whole-cell engineering – is needed to replicate in a single-cell organism the activities and compounds that are produced in nature through interactions involving multiple organelles, cells, and tissues.
We look to plants as our teachers and work with them to unleash their medicinal power. By partnering our technology platform with Mother Nature, we will unlock her full healing potential and make her better.
Our Products
Antheia's pipeline includes essential medicines to treat:




Pain
Cough
Opioid addiction
Depression
Our development pipeline includes medicines to treat:

Cancer

Neurological disesases

Cardiovascular diseases

Infectious diseases
Publications
Valentic T, Payne J, Smolke CD. 2020. Structure determination and engineering of a scoulerine 9-O-methyltransferase enables biosynthesis of novel alkaloids in yeast. ACS Catalysis. 10: 4497-509.
Thodey K, Galanie S, Smolke CD. 2014. A microbial biomanufacturing platform for natural and semi-synthetic opioids. Nat. Chem. Biol. 10: 837-44.