{"id":14928,"date":"1970-08-22T22:07:05","date_gmt":"1970-08-22T22:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms.alj3.clients.lemonhq.io\/?post_type=perspectives&p=14928"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:41:13","slug":"cell-mates","status":"publish","type":"perspectives","link":"https:\/\/cms.alj3.clients.lemonhq.io\/ja\/perspectives\/cell-mates\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell mates"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Q&A with the CEOs of Cellarity and Abdul Latif Jameel Health on their exciting new partnership<\/h4>\n

Abdul Latif Jameel Health<\/a> recently announced its second major commercial partnership of the year, participating in a US$ 123m Series B funding round for Cellarity<\/a>, a cutting-edge US-based life sciences company. \u00a0Cellarity, which was founded by Flagship Pioneering<\/a>, is innovating a new approach to drug discovery by addressing disease at the level of the cell and not aimed at single molecular targets. \u00a0This leads to a more complete understanding of system and network biology to uncover cell-behavior-targeted medicines for a wide variety of diseases.<\/p>\n

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Fabrice Chouraqui<\/p>\n

Chief Executive Officer, Cellarity<\/p><\/div>\n

Cellarity is generating unprecedented biological insights by combining its unique expertise in network biology, high-resolution data, and machine learning. \u00a0The result is nothing short of revolutionary \u2013 a new understanding of the cell’s trajectory from health to disease, and importantly, how cells relate to one another within tissues. \u00a0As the cell and its network of transcripts and proteins offer a more complete view of the complexity of human biology than any single individual molecular target, Cellarity’s approach allows for more efficient drug discovery and is designed to drive higher rates of clinical success.<\/p>\n

We caught up with Fabrice Chouraqui<\/a>, CEO of Cellarity, and Akram Bouchenaki<\/a>, CEO of Abdul Latif Jameel Health, to discuss the science, the ambitions behind the new collaboration, and the opportunities they hope to explore.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Can you summarize Cellarity\u2019s work?<\/h2>\n

FC:<\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0We created Cellarity to pioneer a new generation of medicines that treat disease at the level of the cell, as opposed to targeting a single protein.<\/p>\n

This cell-centric paradigm opens an entirely new dimension of drug discovery and gives us the opportunity to apply our approach across a broad portfolio of medicines.<\/p>\n

What is innovative about this approach?<\/h2>\n

FC: <\/strong>\u00a0Every disease is driven by identifiable cell behaviors. When you think about a disease, you often think about a malfunctioning organ or a malfunctioning tissue in that organ and the malfunctioning cells in that tissue. \u00a0For example, the dysfunction of complex cells in lung tissue is one of the primary causes of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).\u00a0 Traditionally, the objective of drug discovery has been to find a therapeutic intervention that will affect those cells.<\/p>\n

But cells are extremely complex . . .\u00a0\u00a0 They are made of trillions of interacting molecules.<\/p>\n

To date, the only way we have been able to influence the behavior of a certain cell is to find a protein, gene or pathway-based target.\u00a0 So, when we act on that very specific target, we expect to drive the cellular behavior reflective of a given disease. \u00a0This is how drug discovery has worked for the past decade or more.<\/p>\n

\"\"The problem is that by reducing a disease to just a single protein target, you make an assumption that this very complex disease can be reduced to just one molecule and its ability to affect that specific target, and by acting on that target you can reverse the course of the disease. But by doing so, you overlook the complexity of human biology, the interaction between those trillions of cells.<\/p>\n

So, in 2017, the team behind Cellarity asked themselves if there was a way to work at a higher level than just a single molecular target and instead focus on the whole cell.\u00a0 Why the whole cell?<\/p>\n

Because the cell is really the fundamental unit of life. \u00a0By acting on the whole cell and not just a single molecular target, Cellarity aims to harness the full complexity of human biology.<\/p>\n

Have people tried to do this before \u2013 or is it a whole new paradigm of therapeutic intervention?<\/h2>\n

Cellarity is the leading<\/em> company pioneering this specific approach. \u00a0There have been attempts to improve the efficiency of the current drug discovery paradigm by leveraging new techniques, such as single-cell sequencing, phenotypic based drug discovery or leveraging different applications of machine learning.<\/p>\n