Company Overview
IDEAYA is an oncology-focused precision medicine company committed to the discovery and development of targeted therapeutics for patient populations selected using molecular diagnostics. Our approach integrates capabilities in identifying and validating predictive biomarkers with small molecule drug discovery to select patient populations most likely to benefit from our targeted therapies. We are applying these capabilities across multiple classes of precision medicine, including direct targeting of oncogenic pathways at the level of activated oncogenes or downstream signaling components and, synthetic lethality – which represents an emerging class of precision medicine targets. This diversified approach enables our objective to deliver the right medicine to the right patient to drive a more robust clinical benefit.
Founded in 2015, the Company has assembled a world-class team of leading scientists and advisors with extensive knowledge and expertise in cancer biology, small molecule drug discovery, translational biology and clinical development. Our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) consists of academic and industry thought leaders including members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. IDEAYA is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.
An important focus of IDEAYA is to develop therapies directly targeting an oncogenic pathway. Genomic alterations (e.g., mutations) which drive proliferation in cancer cells present targets in the direct mechanistic pathway that may be druggable using small molecule therapeutics. Our most advanced product candidate is IDE196, a clinical stage, potentially first-in-class protein kinase C, or PKC, inhibitor for genetically-defined cancers having GNAQ or GNA11 gene mutations.
Another major focus of IDEAYA is to exploit the concept of synthetic lethality, which occurs between two genes when the loss of function of either gene alone does not affect cell viability, but the simultaneous loss of function of both genes leads to cancer cell death. Our pipeline in synthetic lethality comprises multiple preclinical small molecule therapeutics against known and novel targets for defined patient populations. We are targeting, for example, patients with tumors having MTAP gene deletion, tumors with genetic mutations in homologous recombination deficiency (HRD), including BRCA mutations, or base excision repair (BER), and tumors having high microsatellite instability (MSI). These efforts are complemented by our robust target discovery platform to identify future synthetic lethality program opportunities.
We believe our diversified approach will enable us to broadly address unmet needs in cancer. We have established capabilities that integrate small molecule drug discovery and development with target and biomarker discovery, from early discovery through clinical development. Our translational expertise and platform for discovery, validation and clinical development of biomarkers are applied in each of our pipeline programs. These biomarkers enable patient selection – identifying patients most likely to respond to a particular therapeutic, and establish target engagement – confirming that a therapeutic molecule is acting on its intended target at clinically relevant doses and schedules.