Gordian Bio and Pfizer Partner to Accelerate Obesity Drug Discovery Using In Vivo Screening Platform

A pharmaceutical collaboration is redefining obesity drug discovery by testing thousands of genes in living tissue, bypassing traditional limitations of lab-based models.

Gordian Bio and Pfizer have launched a non-exclusive collaboration to screen obesity-related gene targets in living fat tissue using Gordian’s *in vivo* mosaic platform.

The platform evaluates hundreds of genetic perturbations simultaneously in visceral adipose tissue, a key but previously challenging tissue for ex vivo study.

The partnership aims to identify targets influencing adipocyte behavior, inflammation, and insulin signaling to develop next-generation obesity therapies. Francisco LePort said:

"People are looking for what comes next, post-GLP-1. One area of focus is things like obesogenic memory and other adipocyte-focused mechanisms that could be therapeutically relevant."

Francisco LePort added:

"The industry has long wanted to accelerate this step, but it’s lacked the tools to do so in a meaningful way. What we’ve built is a breakthrough that allows the in vivo validation step, which is traditionally slow and target-by-target, to be massively parallelized."

Gordian’s platform has been translated into five indication areas (adipose, liver, heart, lung, and joint) within a year, with kidney as the next target.

The company is advancing a gene therapy for osteoarthritis through FDA INTERACT and developing an injectable protein-based alternative.

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