Research engineer Alexander Luettringhaus is a key contributor to our team at Kapoose Creek Bio. A bioinformatics grad from Berlin, Germany, he joined us in August 2023, and now spends most days developing machine learning systems at our McMaster University-based lab.
Yet while AI drives the work at Kapoose Creek Bio, it’s not all we’re focused on. We recently invited Alex to accompany us to our research station on a remote coast of Vancouver Island. Here, he got a first-hand look at the unique swath of land it sits on, a temperate rainforest untouched by the last ice age; and learned more about its biodiverse ecosystem, where much of our proprietary collection of macrofungi is sourced. Both KCB-100 and KCB-200, our lead compounds with exciting potential in neurology, come from chemistry harvested at this site.
Although the journey may have been a bit longer than Alex had bargained for (24 hours!) he’ll tell you that the experience proved transformative. Below, he reflects on the trip and the importance of his work.
What was the journey to the research station like?
For someone like me who loves the outdoors, it was absolutely incredible to accompany the team to the beautiful Kapoose Creek rainforest. Getting there was a real adventure! We first flew to Victoria, then drove by car through Nanaimo and on to Woss, the last place we could get a cell signal. From Woss we continued along a gravel road for nearly four hours until we reached Fair Harbor, where a member of the local First Nations community picked us up by water taxi and ferried us across to Volcanic Cove. Along the way, we spotted sea otters, seals, and even a humpback whale – a breathtaking reminder of the incredible biodiversity of this remote region.
From Volcanic Cove, we continued by truck for another hour, until we reached Kapoose Creek, which we couldn’t cross by vehicle due to salmon protection efforts. We unloaded all our gear, carried it across an improvised bridge, then reloaded it onto a second truck for the final ten-minute drive to the research station. It was a long, rugged journey, but one that made arriving at Kapoose Creek Bio’s research station feel all the more extraordinary.
What were your impressions of the Kapoose Creek rainforest?
I was truly amazed by the experience. The landscape was breathtakingly beautiful, a vast expanse of ancient forests, towering mountains, untouched beaches, and the endless Pacific Ocean. Signs of wildlife were everywhere, from the footprints of wolves and black bears to sightings of seals and sea otters along the shore. I had the unique opportunity to participate fully in the entire drug discovery process, from collecting fungal specimens in the field, to helping prepare them for bioassays in the wet lab, to organizing and analyzing the resulting data. As a research engineer, being actively involved in every stage of the process gave me a renewed appreciation for the potential that nature holds for creating powerful medicines, and for the critical role that technology plays in unlocking their value.
What intrigues you most about drug discovery from nature?
I find it fascinating that nature has already solved many of the problems that scientists are trying to solve. It’s about tapping into this incredible wealth of knowledge and translating it into real-world applications. The fact that I get to extract key information from these ecosystems, and be part of the process of creating next-generation medicines, is deeply rewarding.
Research engineer Alexander Luettringhaus got a first-hand look the biodiverse ecosystem of the Kapoose Creek rainforest on a recent trip to Vancouver Island.
In your view, how important is AI in the discovery of drugs from nature?
Artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, is transformative. Without AI-driven pattern recognition and automated analysis, identifying promising compounds would be prohibitively slow. By applying machine learning, we can uncover hidden patterns, prioritize the most relevant leads, and dramatically accelerate the path from raw data to new therapeutic candidates.
Can you tell us about your contributions to Kapoose Creek Bio’s work?
I focus on optimizing data workflows that are critical to Kapoose Creek Bio’s discovery pipeline. One major challenge we addressed early on was the slow analysis of imaging data generated from wet lab experiments. Sequential processing could take over a year to complete a single study. To overcome this, we developed parallelized pipelines that dramatically reduce analysis time – enabling much faster transitions from experimental results to data-driven hypotheses. This acceleration not only speeds up discovery but also improves the quality and scale of data available for identifying promising compounds.
What excites you most about your work?
Kapoose Creek Bio’s proprietary AI and machine learning tools have the potential to greatly accelerate the natural product drug discovery process, taking a natural compound from discovery to screening and identifying a hit with remarkable speed and precision. It’s incredibly exciting to be a part of this transformative work.
