molecular-glues
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Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals
Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals is a Baltimore-based, clinical-stage drug discovery company spun out of Johns Hopkins University. Its RapaGlue platform designs non-degrading, cell-permeable macrocyclic molecular glues that modulate hard-to-drug intracellular and transmembrane targets - drawing on a proprietary DNA-encoded library of more than 8 billion compounds and machine learning for target selection. The lead program, RAP-0001, is a selective ENT1 inhibitor advancing toward IND-enabling studies for the prevention of acute kidney injury in cardiac surgery patients, with a broader pipeline spanning oncology, immunology, and pain.
Sean X. Hu
Sean X. Hu is the President and CEO of Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals, a Baltimore-based biotech spun out of Johns Hopkins that is building a library of natural-product-like macrocycles it calls RapaGlues. He is a genomics PhD turned Wharton MBA turned management consultant turned operator, with prior stops at Bristol Myers Squibb, CuraGen, Illumina, AT Kearney, IMS, Bionest, BioStrat, GlobalData, and Avotres. In September 2025 he closed an oversubscribed $44M Series A led by BioTrack Capital and Yonjin Capital to push RapaGlues into difficult-to-drug targets.
Drug Hunter
Drug Hunter is a Boston-based knowledge platform for the scientists who turn molecules into medicines. Founded in 2018 by former Genentech chemist Dennis X. Hu, it distills scientific literature, patents, and early disclosures into searchable, expert-curated insights - molecule search, patent search, courses, flash talks, and a mobile app. More than 200 R&D organizations, including Eli Lilly, Biogen, Merck KGaA, Isomorphic Labs, and the NIH, rely on it. In September 2025 the company raised a seed round led by Teamworthy Ventures.
Plexium
Plexium is a San Diego precision medicine company designing small-molecule protein degraders - monovalent direct degraders and molecular glues - that switch off disease-driving proteins traditionally considered undruggable. Its DELTA Discovery platform runs ultra-high-throughput cell-based screening to find and optimize new degrader chemistry across cancer and neurological disease.
Fathom Therapeutics
Fathom Therapeutics (formerly Atommap) is a New York and Boston based biotech building Microcosmos, a drug-design engine that fuses quantum chemistry and AI to simulate how proteins actually move inside living cells. By modeling motion instead of static snapshots - reportedly up to 10,000x faster than conventional simulation - the company hunts for the fleeting binding pockets that make 'undruggable' targets druggable, then designs small molecules, degraders, and molecular glues against them. In April 2026 it raised a $47M oversubscribed Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures.
Greg Verdine
Gregory L. Verdine is a Harvard-trained chemical biologist who coined the phrase 'drugging the undruggable' and built an empire around it. The Erving Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, he co-invented stapled peptides, pioneered the field of chemical biology, and founded or co-founded more than a dozen biotech companies - several of which reached the Nasdaq and three of which produced FDA-approved drugs. In July 2023 he joined Andreessen Horowitz as a Venture Partner on the Bio + Health team, bringing his rare combination of deep scientific discovery, serial entrepreneurship, and capital deployment to one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture firms.