Founded to make the undruggable druggable
Formerly known as Fog Pharmaceuticals, Parabilis Medicines was founded in 2015 to address a fundamental gap in modern drug development: the great progress made in identifying human disease targets had not been matched by advances in the ability to develop medicines for them.
Targets the industry wrote off
For decades many promising disease targets were dismissed as “undruggable” — beyond the reach of conventional modalities such as small molecules or biologics. The reasoning looked straightforward: many proteins exist inside the cell, out of reach of traditional biologics, and they lack the deep pockets that selective, potent small-molecule binding normally requires.
Cyclosporine A already knew how
That explanation ignored a fact: some drugs can enter cells and bind the flat surfaces of challenging targets. Macrocyclic natural products such as cyclosporine A were proof the challenge could be overcome. The question was how to learn from nature's example and discover such drugs — without needing millions of years of natural evolution to do it.
Timeline
1990s — today- Late 1990s
An insight at Harvard
Professor Gregory Verdine and his laboratory in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology recognised that the protein alpha-helix already does both jobs a difficult target needs: it embeds in membranes and it binds flat protein surfaces.
- 2000
The first Helicons
The lab stabilised short peptides in an alpha-helical conformation so they could enter cells and engage flat disease targets. The all-hydrocarbon stapling system was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society — the work behind what became known as stapled peptides.
- 2000–2015
Fifteen years of chemistry
The core Helicon chemistry kept advancing, and discovery technologies including Helicon library screening were developed alongside it. That body of work became the scientific and intellectual property core of the platform.
- 2015
A company is founded
Parabilis Medicines — then known as Fog Pharmaceuticals — was founded to address the gap between the targets science could identify and the medicines it could actually develop for them.
- 2016
Operations begin
Greg Verdine led the company as CEO and directed its scientific research, alongside co-founder and COO WeiQing Zhou, whose remit ran from business strategy and corporate development to finance and operations.
- 2020
A home for the science
The company's 120,000 square foot building opened — the result of construction work led by WeiQing Zhou.
The renaming from Fog Pharmaceuticals to Parabilis Medicines is not dated in our records — tell us the year and it joins the timeline.
Co-founder & CEO 2015–2023
Professor Gregory Verdine
Led the company as CEO and directed its scientific research, after first making the alpha-helix insight that the platform rests on.
Co-founder & COO
WeiQing Zhou
Took on everything from business strategy and corporate development to finance and operations, including the construction of the company's 120,000 square foot building.
The modality that came out of this story is now the platform
See what the Helicons™ platform is working on today, and where the company stands as a listed business.