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About Us
Zenagem Mission
Zenagem exists to turn overlooked chemistry into lifesaving medicine.
We harness activity-based chemoproteomics to reveal druggable, electrophile-dependent machinery inside proteins and to de-orphan “mystery” drugs whose powerful biology has outpaced our understanding of their targets.
By starting from real molecules already active in patients—like hydrazine-based drugs and probes—we rapidly uncover their mechanisms, re-link them to disease biology, and translate those insights into new, targeted therapies for conditions with few or no options, including preeclampsia, glioblastoma, infection, and chronic pain.
Our Goal
Our goal is to build a new layer of precision pharmacology that complements genetics and gene editing: one that reads out functional cofactor chemistry directly in living systems, then uses that information to repurpose old drugs, design next-generation covalent inhibitors, and get better therapies to patients faster.
Zenagem Philosophy
Guided by these principles, Zenagem is building a chemoproteomics-first biotech: one that uses unconventional chemistry and fearless curiosity to close the gap between interesting molecules, hard biology, and actual cures.
See what others can’t (yet)
We deliberately work in underrepresented chemistry—the electrophilic cofactors, radical mechanisms, and post-translational “hardware upgrades” on proteins that traditional discovery platforms largely ignore.
By building reverse-polarity ABPP and hydrazine probe libraries that read out these features directly in cells, we open up whole hemispheres of disease biology and “undruggable” space.
Reimagine “old” drugs as new starting points
Many of the safest, most widely used drugs never had their mechanisms fully explained. We treat them as an asset, not a liability.
By mapping their proteome-wide engagement and covalent chemistry with modern mass spectrometry, we can repurpose molecules like hydralazine into first-in-class inhibitors for newly validated targets, then build focused analog series around those insights.
Complement genetics with chemistry
Knockouts and CRISPR reveal what happens when proteins are removed; our covalent chemistry shows what happens when their cofactors and active sites are perturbed in real time.
We design probes and inhibitors that act as “chemical knockdowns” of enzyme function, providing tunable, pharmacological, and tissue-specific tools that better mirror how medicines will work in patients.
Start from function, not dogma
Instead of forcing biology into a predefined target list, we let the proteome tell us which proteins and cofactors are actually doing work in a given disease state—whether that’s ADO driving preeclampsia and glioblastoma, SCRN3 shaping nociception, or Stickland reductases powering C. difficile colonization.
Drugs and probes that change these activities in situ become our fastest route to new therapeutics.
Honor rigor, transparency, and self-reflection
We build our platform like a meta-analysis in motion: orthogonal assays, cross-validated mechanisms, careful separation of signal from noise, and constant scanning for our own biases—just as we QC every experiment.
Only targets and mechanisms that reproduce across diverse systems and collaborators become partners setting the direction and accelerating the trajectory of our therapeutic pipeline.
Stay patient-anchored
We prioritize indications where our technology can uniquely help: pregnancy-related disorders, aggressive cancers, and infections where cofactor-dependent metabolism or oxygen sensing is central to disease.
Every program is judged by its potential to change a real clinical trajectory, not just to make a pretty volcano plot.
