Phylo Launches Tool to Speed Up Drug Target Selection
News related to:Phylo · 2 min read
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 29, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- Phylo, a leading AI-driven platform for biomedical research, today unveiled Target Atlas, an innovative tool designed to streamline the process of identifying and prioritizing drug targets. The new app, built on Biomni Lab, Phylo's Integrated Biology Environment, promises to revolutionize the way scientists approach target selection, a critical step in the drug development process.
The release highlights the importance of target choice in drug development, noting that only about one in ten drug programs that enter clinical development is ultimately approved (et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2014). This statistic underscores the critical nature of choosing the right target at the outset, as it can significantly impact the success rate of a drug program.
Target Atlas addresses this challenge by providing a comprehensive and efficient solution. The app automates the process of evidence gathering, which previously took months of work by teams of scientists. Now, with Target Atlas, this process can be completed in days, creating a shared, up-to-date record that links findings to their sources. This shared, auditable evidence layer is crucial for ensuring that the right evidence is used in decision-making, as AI agents apply consistent analyses across targets, while scientists decide which evidence matters and how much weight it should carry.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, a key partner in developing the MJFF Parkinson's edition of Target Atlas, has been at the forefront of efforts to identify and prioritize promising targets for Parkinson's disease. The MJFF's initiative, established through community nominations, expert panels, curated scorecards, and a published methodology (Vaiana et al., npj Parkinson's Disease, 2025), has provided a transparent framework for prioritization. The MJFF's edition of Target Atlas makes this expert framework openly explorable, connecting it to source-linked analyses that can be refreshed as new evidence emerges.
Target Atlas, available in both public and enterprise editions, is designed to be a shared, source-linked view for teams to compare evidence and align on decisions. The public edition spans thousands of target-disease assessments, presented through source-linked target profiles and interactive 2x2 plots. The enterprise edition, available by annual license, enables teams to manage up to 20,000 targets per selected disease, integrate proprietary data, and access advanced features such as target-pair dashboards and AI/ML-based scoring.
Phylo's mission is to bring the best agentic intelligence to every biomedical scientist. The company's enterprise-grade AI platform, Biomni Lab, is a unified workspace where scientists collaborate with AI agents across literature research, experimental design, biological data analysis, and scientific decision-making. Leading global biopharmaceutical companies, including Chugai Pharmaceutical and Ono Pharmaceutical, use Biomni Lab.
Phylo recently raised a $13.5 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Menlo Ventures' Anthology Fund with Anthropic. The company is based in South San Francisco.
The MJFF's Targets to Therapies (T2T) Initiative, launched in 2024, aims to expand promising, druggable biological targets in the Parkinson's disease translational pipeline. The initiative combines community-sourced nominations with expert panel-guided prioritization and validation roadmaps, drawing on MJFF datasets and collaborations with Aligning Science Across Parkinson's (ASAP), including the Collaborative Research Network, Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative, and Global Parkinson's Genetics Program.
Target Atlas, including the MJFF Parkinson's edition, is available at biomni.phylo.bio.