Haya's approach redefines the drug target. Instead of focusing on single proteins or pathways, they identify the "causal unit" of disease as the cellular behaviors that dictate how patients feel, function, and survive, and then work backwards to find a target.
Before founding Haya, Samir Ounzain spent a year and a half consuming podcasts and online content about biotech entrepreneurship. This "crowdsourced mentorship" allowed him to learn from the mistakes of others and frame the company's culture and operating model from day one.
Haya's AI platform is differentiated by its focus on deconvoluting the "dark genome" to identify completely novel, "first-in-biology" targets. This contrasts with AI applications that merely optimize molecules for known biological pathways or targets.
The transition from academic scientist to biotech CEO involves a critical mindset shift. In academia, ideas and knowledge are the primary capital. In the resource-intensive biotech world, time is the scarcest and most valuable asset, demanding parallel execution.
Previously dismissed as "junk DNA," the non-coding 98% of the genome is actually the information processing core. It's where epigenetics happens, allowing our genome to respond to the environment, and it's where most genetic risk for chronic diseases is found.
Acknowledging the "garbage in, garbage out" principle, Haya heavily invests in generating high-quality, layered, and paired multi-omic data from the same biological material. This curated input is considered the most critical component for building effective AI models to unlock new biology.