Dr. Katie Kuo of Atomistic Insights presenting at Demo Day. Photo: Cure.
Overview
After taking first place at The Cure by Deerfield Middle East Health Accelerator’s Demo Day, Atomistic Insights is establishing a presence in Qatar and exploring co-discovery partnerships, as it advances its physics-driven AI platform for drug development.
Atomistic Insights, an Atlanta-based drug discovery startup that uses molecular simulations and deep learning to model protein motion, is working to reshape how new therapeutics are developed. Its physics-based platform integrates atomic forces and thermodynamics into a predictive framework designed to reduce the time and cost often associated with drug development.
That approach recently earned them first place at The Cure by Deerfield Middle East Health Accelerator’s Demo Day competition, where 13 startups presented to a judging panel of regional healthcare, investment, and policy stakeholders. Atomistic Insights is now laying the groundwork for a presence in Qatar.
In an exclusive interview with Cure, founders Dr. Katie Kuo and Dr. Shiyao Bao spoke about their experience being part of the accelerator, what inspired their journey into therapeutics, and their immediate plans for the future.
Bringing Drug Discovery Technologies Out of Academia
Although still in its early stages, Atomistic Insights shows real promise for making drug discovery more accessible. Kuo first encountered the challenges of developing novel therapeutics during her years in a research lab, an experience that shaped her approach to innovation. She later started graduate school at Georgia Tech, where she worked in a computational biophysics lab. “I thought to myself, surely, there are ways that we can use the computational innovations that are around us to make it a little bit easier to discover and develop novel therapeutics,” she explained.
That moment inspired her to start Atomistic Insights, and she soon joined forces with Bao. Reflecting on her motivation, Kuo said, “We want to have an impact on human health and disease, and bring technologies out of academia, where maybe only a subset of people are reading your papers and the impact on greater society is limited.”
Before learning about the Cure by Deerfield Middle East Health Accelerator, the team had completed the Alchemist Accelerator based out of San Francisco and were focused on raising a pre-seed and seed round in the US. They applied to the program, eager to connect with companies like themselves, and were selected among more than 100 applicants to undergo the 12-week mentorship and learning curriculum that would sharpen their business pitch and provide an opportunity to explore the healthcare market Qatar.
“Given that the biotech environment in the US is still trying to recover post-COVID, Katie and I decided to give it a try and see how the ecosystem looks in Qatar and the greater Middle East region,” Bao shared. “That was our motivation for doing the accelerator.”
From Theory to Practice in Qatar’s Healthcare Ecosystem
The program itself, which kicked off at The X Factor, a three-day biotech conference in New York City hosted by Cure, and concluded with Demo Day in Qatar, gave Kuo and Bao the chance to meet and trade experience with other companies spanning biotech, advanced therapeutics, and digital health.
Leading up to Demo Day in Qatar, the cohort followed a structured curriculum that included guest lectures, AMAs on market entry and competitive intelligence, and over 250 pages of case studies detailing how founders successfully scaled their companies.
The program's time in Qatar provided Kuo and Bao with critical clarity. “The last two weeks in Qatar were the highlight of the whole program,” shared Bao. She added that, until arriving in Qatar, they had only been learning about the Middle East in theory, but the ecosystem itself remained unclear. They weren’t sure how much people cared about research or science, or how much effort was going into building a strong healthcare culture.
Their experience allowed them to engage directly with the local healthcare system and ultimately confirmed their decision to expand operations to Qatar. “With all the effort from the Cure team, we really met a lot of stakeholders in the healthcare system in Qatar, and that was a great experience for us,” shared Bao.
Establishing a Presence in Qatar
Following their Demo Day win, Atomistic Insights was admitted to the Incubate program at the Qatar Science and Technology Park and is in discussions with Qatari institutions to explore co-discovery drug development projects. “We are interested in targeting genetic diseases that are prevalent in Qatar and the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] region,” Bao shared.
The founding team plans to establish a presence in Qatar in the near term, leveraging the Incubate program to support regional expansion. At the same time, their US-based company continues to advance its core technology and expects to release the next iteration of its algorithm later this year with expanded capabilities and features.
