Health

Alumni-founded biotech firm enters partnership to advance treatment for undruggable targets

Unnatural Products, a biotech company founded by UC Santa Cruz alumni Cameron Pye (Ph.D. ’17, chemistry & biochemistry) and Joshua Schwochert (Ph.D. ’17, chemistry & biochemistry), opens up treatment possibilities for diseases once thought to be undruggable.

February 23, 2026

By Haneen Zain

UC Santa Cruz alumni Cameron Pye (Ph.D. ’17, chemistry & biochemistry) and Joshua Schwochert (Ph.D. ’17, chemistry & biochemistry) are advancing the frontiers of biotechnology through their company, Unnatural Products (UNP). The company recently announced a strategic partnership with pharmaceutical leader Novartis to develop next-generation therapeutics, leveraging UNP’s AI-enhanced macrocycle platform to target proteins long considered untreatable.

UNP develops drugs that use a unique type of molecule called a macrocycle. Macrocyclic peptides can bind to challenging protein targets and can provide an oral pill form of what currently is only addressable with injectable options. This has broad-ranging applications in diseases like metabolic dysfunction, inflammation and auto-immune, and hard to treat cancers with limited current therapeutic options.

UNP’s platform combines AI-guided compound design, massively parallel synthesis, and direct-to-biology screening, enabling the rapid generation of drug-like macrocycles that bind challenging targets with antibody-like specificity. UNP is building a pipeline of oral medicines for oncology, immunology, and rare diseases.

The newly announced partnership brings together UNP’s AI-enhanced macrocycle platform and Novartis’ global development and commercialization capabilities to generate next-generation therapeutics with potential applications in the cardiovascular disease area.

Rooted in Santa Cruz, inspired by UCSC

The seeds for this groundbreaking work were planted at UC Santa Cruz in Professor Scott Lokey’s lab, where both founders pursued their doctoral research. Their collaboration began with a shared passion for combining wet lab techniques and computational chemistry.

“The university’s first-class facilities, including a chemical screening facility, and the ability to work across labs gave us a broad perspective,”  Schwochert said in  a story published by UC Santa Cruz in 2025 . “We love UCSC’s community—brilliant people focused on impactful work, without the glitz and glam of prestige-driven institutions.”

UNP maintains strong ties with UCSC, hiring over a dozen Banana Slug alums (thus far) and collaborating with faculty.