About Predictive, LLC
Founded in 2019 out of Dr. Alex Tropsha's Lab at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and lead by the team of Kevin Causey, Alex Tropsha, Eugene Muratov, and Vinicius Alves. Read more about the team members below.
Kevin Causey, MBA
Co-Founder and CEO
Vice President of Business Development at MatTek Life Sciences
Mr. Causey graduated from North Carolina State University in Raleigh NC receiving his BS in Biological Sciences and MBA from Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer NC. In 2019, he cofounded Predictive, LLC, a UNC startup to commercialize computationaltechnologies developed in Dr. Tropsha’s academic laboratory. He is also currently the Vice President of Business Development for MatTek Life Sciences a BICO company, and has preformed similar roles at ScitoVation, and Integrated Laboratory Systems. He is passionate about the elimination of animal studies in research and development and Predictive, LLC’s mission to use artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to understand how pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and personal care products affect people.
Alexander Tropsha, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist
Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Tropsha graduated from Moscow State University in Russia receiving his MS in Chemical Enzymology and PhD Biochemistry. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the UNC School of Pharmacy (with Jan Hermans and Phil Bowen) and then recruited to the same school as an Assistant Professor. He is currently K.H. Lee Distinguished Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy (ranked #1 in the country by US News & World Report). His research interests have been in the areas of Computer-Assisted Drug Design, Cheminformatics, and Computational Toxicology. His has authored or co-authored more than 265 peer-reviewed research papers, reviews, and book chapters and co-edited two monographs. He has trained more than 30 graduate students and over 30 postdoctoral fellows. His research has been supported by multiple grants from the NIH, NSF, EPA, DOD, foundations, and private companies. In 2019, he cofounded Predictive, LLC, a UNC startup to commercialize computational technologies developed in his academic laboratory.
Eugene Muratov, PhD
Co-Founder
Research Associate Professor at University of North Carolina at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Muratov is a Research Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, UNC-Chapel Hill. He received MS in technology of organic substances from Odessa National Polytechnic University in 2000 and PhD in organic chemistry in 2004 from the A.V. Bogatsky Physical-Chemical Institute. In 2014-2021 he was a Visiting Professor at the Federal Universities of Goias and Paraiba, Brazil. His research interests are in the areas of cheminformatics (especially QSAR), computer-assisted drug design, antiviral research, computational toxicology, and medicinal chemistry. He has co-authored peer-reviewed publications and edited two books. He is also a co-founder of Predictive, LLC and served as academic PI in several SBIR and STTR grants and FDA contract.
Vinicius Alves, PhD
Co-Founder
Research Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Alves received his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences in 2017 from the Federal University of Goias, Brazil. He joined UNC-Chapel Hill as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018 and NIEHS as a research fellow in 2020. Currently, he is a research assistant professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He has experience developing and implementing innovative cheminformatics and molecular modeling approaches; quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) modeling; management and analysis of complex data; and application of predictive models in screening large libraries of virtual compounds for prioritizing hits to be tested experimentally. He is a very collaborative scientist, publishing more than 40 papers (h-index 19 on Google Scholar) in highly impactful peer-reviewed journals. In 2018 he received the prestigious Lush Prize in the Young Researcher category for his work on developing computational models and platforms to serve as alternatives to animal testing.
Predictive, LLC’s mission is dedicated to using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to understand how pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and personal care products affect people. An area we see that has an unmet need is a software platform that can leverage the existing 6 Pack of toxicology assays database to make predictions about products and the mixture of those products and their potential toxicity. Current safety testing for new compounds entering commerce is expensive and inefficient, relying too heavily on animal testing with questionable relevance to human safety. In this application, we propose a predictive platform that makes use of standardized experiments performed in past GLP studies to better inform early safety decision making. This work will improve public health by increasing the throughput of efficiency and confidence in the toxicology assessment. This software package will have an instant impact on how toxicology studies are analyzed in industry and will not only reduce the number of animals used in testing, will also provide safer compounds as in vitro assays become more predict to actual human health outcomes.