Exin Therapeutics is developing genetic therapies targeting neural activity for people suffering from neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. We are tackling conditions like epilepsy, debilitating symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and Parkinson’s disease by focusing on the neural circuitry of the brain.

Why is this important?

Millions of people around the world suffer from neurological disorders. These disorders arise from imbalances in brain activity. Think of it like an orchestra where some instruments are playing too loud while others are too quiet. This “bad music” / neural imbalance—what we call excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance—is the root cause of many symptoms in these disorders. For example, in epilepsy, overactive circuits lead to seizures, while in ASD, it can cause sensory hypersensitivities - where individuals feel overwhelmed by normal sounds, lights, or touch that most people wouldn't even notice. These dysregulations in neural circuits impact how the brain processes information and responds to the world, leading to the debilitating symptoms we see in these disorders.

Our solution

We’re taking a circuit-level approach to treating brain disorders. Instead of trying to restore missing genes, we’re supplementing already existing genes that we know will be directly changing the neural activity in the brain - in the direction that we want and independently of the genetic background.

We are also working on an AI model to streamline our preclinical R&D. Here’s why: developing therapies for the brain is hard. Every candidate needs to be tested for its ability to modulate circuits, and doing that through a traditional drug development preclinical pathway is a slow process.

Because of that, we use ML to analyze high-density screening data and prioritize which assets are worth testing further. We use neural activity, behavior, and transcriptomics to train multimodal AI models that identify the drivers of the disease, which are not observable by conventional analytical methods.

Then, we use these models to (1) predict the potential of our therapies to treat particular indications and (2) provide an efficacy readout during our internal experimental testing. This way, we spend our time (and funding) testing the most promising candidates.

Our ask

1. Intros: If you have contacts in pharma, working on complementary tech, or have ideas for partnerships, we’d love to connect.
2. We'd love to hear from people who have worked in therapeutics and people with IND-enabling programs or clinical trial design experience.

Team

We are a team of 3 Oxford-educated neuroscientists. Gabriel is a biochemist with a wealth of research experience in neural development, gene therapy, and NeuroAI. He holds a PhD in Pharmacology from Oxford. Ivan is a physicist by training and has worked in molecular biology, circuit, and systems neuroscience. Ivan’s brother suffers from ASD and Ivan is on a mission to improve the quality of life for patients suffering from debilitating neurological conditions. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from Oxford. Marko has experience with iPSC models, retinal disorders, and circadian and developmental neuroscience. During his PhD, he worked in systems and behavioral neuroscience and holds an MSc from Oxford.

We are supported by a team of advisors from top industry and academic institutions - including Harvard & UCL.