Soley Therapeutics CEO Discusses Developing Therapeutics Rooted in Cell Behavior

Yerem Yeghiazarians explains how studying cell response to stress can reveal new drug discovery insights.

Feb. 24, 2026 at 12:00am by Ben Kaplan

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In an interview, Yerem Yeghiazarians, CEO and cofounder of Soley Therapeutics, discusses how capturing the complexity of disease requires going beyond a single target and instead viewing whole cell behavior. Yeghiazarians explains the significance of studying cell response rather than starting with genes or pathways, the importance of studying how cells respond to stress and drug exposure, and how this approach has translated into Soley's drug discovery efforts.

Why it matters

Yeghiazarians' insights challenge the traditional drug discovery approach of identifying a specific gene or pathway target up-front. Instead, his team focuses on observing how living human cells sense stress and respond to perturbations over time, which can reveal novel mechanisms and lead to the development of a more diversified pipeline of potential therapeutics.

The details

Yeghiazarians explains that in many complex diseases, cells are operating under sustained stress, but what differs is how cells sense and interpret that stress and what decisions they make as a result. By studying cellular stress responses, his team has found that cell fate is not binary or instantaneous, but rather cells move along trajectories. Small perturbations can have dramatic effects on cells operating close to failure under chronic stress. This has led Soley to focus on identifying compounds that selectively increase stress in cancer cells already operating near their limits, while in non-oncology indications, finding molecules that reduce or rebalance stress to restore cells toward healthier states.

  • Yeghiazarians earned his MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
  • He completed his residency, fellowship, and training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
  • He served as a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he founded and directed the Translational Cardiac Stem Cell Program.

The players

Yerem Yeghiazarians

CEO and cofounder of Soley Therapeutics, a clinician-scientist with over 20 years of experience in cardiology, stem cell biology, and translational research.

Soley Therapeutics

A biotechnology company that is taking a biology-first discovery strategy, focused on observing how living human cells sense stress and respond to perturbations over time.

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What they’re saying

“The significance is that it flips the starting point of discovery. Genes and pathways are essential tools, but they are abstractions. They describe parts of the system, providing snapshots of individual molecular components, but fail to indicate the resultant cell state and behavior of the entire cell-biological system.”

— Yerem Yeghiazarians, CEO and cofounder, Soley Therapeutics (drugdiscoveryonline.com)

“Cellular stress is the common denominator across many diseases, and cellular stress is a fundamental mechanism in how cells respond to drugs. Cancer, neurodegeneration, metabolic disease, and cardiovascular disease are all conditions in which cells are operating under sustained stress.”

— Yerem Yeghiazarians, CEO and cofounder, Soley Therapeutics (drugdiscoveryonline.com)

The takeaway

Soley Therapeutics' approach to drug discovery, which focuses on observing how living human cells sense and respond to stress over time, challenges the traditional model of identifying a specific gene or pathway target up-front. This biology-first strategy has the potential to reveal novel mechanisms and lead to a more diversified pipeline of potential therapeutics for complex diseases.