Why Enveda Teaches AI to Read Nature's Chemistry
September 9, 2026
Isn’t it crazy to think that half of FDA-approved small molecule drugs have roots in nature? But José Trevejo, Chief Medical Officer at Enveda, says the opportunity now is not to romanticize that history, but to make it usable at modern speed. In this episode of Power to the Patients, Brandon Li speaks with José about AI-assisted drug discovery, mass spectrometry, ENV-294 and why the real bottleneck in biotech may no longer be finding molecules. It may be scaling the trials to test them.
By combining ancient healing stories with high-throughput technology, researchers now identify these candidates in hours rather than years. This clinical acceleration is rewriting the early-stage discovery playbook.
Drug discovery from nature is not a new idea. It is one of pharma’s oldest ideas.
Aspirin, metformin, and many other small molecule drugs trace their origins back to natural sources. Historically, the bottleneck was complexity. Finding a single active molecule inside a plant with 10,000 unique compounds used to take years. In this episode of Power to the Patients, host Brandon Li speaks with Dr. José Trevejo, Chief Medical Officer at Enveda, about how the company is using AI, high-throughput mass spectrometry, chemistry and traditional medicine knowledge to speed up that search.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why roughly half of FDA-approved small molecule drugs have natural origins
- Why natural product discovery was historically slow, even when the biology looked promising
- How Enveda uses mass spectrometry and AI to identify chemical structures faster
- Why José sees mass spectra as a language AI can learn to interpret
- How traditional medicine knowledge graphs guide candidate selection
- What ENV-294 reveals about the link between historical use and modern inflammatory disease research
- Why natural-product-derived molecules may have a development safety advantage
- Why real-world data, synthetic control arms, and in silico safety tools could shape the next phase of clinical development
About the Guest
Dr. José Trevejo is the Chief Medical Officer at Enveda, a clinical-stage biotechnology company using AI to translate nature's chemistry into new medicines.
He is a Cornell-Rockefeller-Sloan Kettering trained physician-scientist with deep experience leading clinical development and regulatory strategy at Vertex, Genentech, and Tarsus.
At Enveda, José helps lead the company's clinical pipeline strategy, including ENV-294, an oral small molecule in development for inflammatory conditions like atopic dermatitis and asthma.
His work sits at the intersection of natural product chemistry, AI-assisted drug discovery, and practical clinical development.
Episode Resources
- José Trevejo on LinkedIn
- Enveda Website
- Brandon Li on LinkedIn
- With Power Website
- Power on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/withpower/