Origami: Correcting or eliminating misfolded proteins

As pharmas were exiting neuroscience in droves around 2015, Origami President and CEO Beth Hoffman decided to take the opposite tack: leveraging her background in neuroscience and protein folding correctors to bring a fresh MOA to the space.

Origami Therapeutics Inc. is gearing up to raise a seed round to fund the start-up, which is initially focusing on Huntington disease, said Hoffman, who was VP, discovery biology at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VRTX) in 2007-14. During that time, one of her scientists showed her data that a small molecule could turn a misfolded, non-functional protein into a properly folded, functional protein...