EMERYVILLE, Calif.– Fauna Bio, a biotech firm exploring the intersection of animal genomics and human health, has launched Fauna Brain™, a next-generation AI platform designed to accelerate drug target discovery by mimicking nature’s most resilient biological systems. The proprietary technology builds on Fauna’s existing Convergence™ discovery engine and is already in use through collaborations with major pharmaceutical partners.
Fauna Brain is a multi-agent AI system capable of autonomously performing complex research tasks typically handled by expert scientific teams. These include drug target identification, evidence synthesis, and the creation of detailed concept sheets outlining mechanistic rationales and risk-benefit analyses. The system draws from both Fauna’s extensive proprietary datasets and public scientific databases, significantly streamlining early-stage research and development.
According to Fauna Bio, the platform can evaluate a drug target in just 2.5 minutes at an average cost of about one cent. It can screen numerous targets in parallel, allowing researchers to efficiently assess thousands of potential candidates—cutting both time and costs far below traditional R&D methods.
The AI behind Fauna Brain is powered by Convergence™, which mines comparative genomic insights from mammals with extreme traits such as hibernation, regeneration, and disease resistance. By analyzing genomic and molecular data from 292 species across 24 tissues and 21 time points—amounting to more than 46 billion sequence reads—the platform uncovers protective biological signatures that may be missed when relying solely on human datasets.
Fauna Bio’s participation in the Zoonomia Consortium, a global initiative that produced a whole-genome alignment across 240 mammalian species, has further strengthened the company’s data resources. Using specialized AI engines dubbed Orca, Centaur, and Pegasus, Fauna Brain maps these evolutionary signatures to human disease pathways and prioritizes the most promising drug targets based on efficacy, safety, and druggability.
Two Fauna Brain-identified targets have already advanced into funded research collaborations with a major pharmaceutical partner, signaling strong early validation of the platform’s potential. Internally, Fauna Bio is applying the technology to a growing pipeline that includes programs in heart failure, neuroprotection, obesity, and retinal disease. The company is also exploring applications in space health and radiation resistance.
Among its lead candidates is Faun1083, a compound based on genes linked to hibernation. The candidate has shown promising results in preclinical models of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), improving diastolic function—a key challenge in treating this condition.
“Fauna Brain is the next evolution for us,” said Ashley Zehnder, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Fauna Bio. “It allows us to bring the power of AI to bear on nature’s most resilient biology and do it at a scale and speed that wasn’t previously possible. The fact that targets prioritized by Fauna Brain are already moving into pharma-backed programs validates its impact.”
With Fauna Brain, the company aims to redefine early-stage drug discovery by harnessing nature’s evolutionary innovations, offering new hope for developing treatments across a wide range of complex diseases.
