Ruth-Anne Pai, PhD
Immunologist, protein designer, and a person living with eosinophilic esophagitis. I build open, patient-first therapeutic science — and this project is what one week of it looks like when the patient and the scientist are the same person.
The citizen-scientist thesis
For many patients the path to an EoE diagnosis is long and indirect, and the treatment that follows is genuinely effective for many but fundamentally incomplete: PPIs, swallowed steroids, elimination diets, and dupilumab each reduce inflammation, but none is curative, all require indefinite adherence, and inflammation typically returns when treatment stops. The burden that doesn't show up in a biopsy — chewing every bite an unusual number of times, drinking with every mouthful, a quiet, rational anxiety around choking — is a disease that asks for constant, low-grade attention, meal after meal, for life.
That lived reality is not incidental to this work; it is its origin. When the immunologist and the patient are the same person, patient experience becomes a design input rather than a marketing note — it shapes which priorities lead, which endpoints matter, and how a community would be engaged.
What one week produced
With access to computational tools (folding and ESM-family models on GPU, public literature and omics, epitope prediction), clear immunological principles, and one week of focus, this project went from “here is a disease” to: novel epitopes identified from the EoE literature, structurally validated at atomic resolution; a multivalent tolerance platform grounded in published precedent; a complete preclinical development path with decision gates and budgets; and reusable software so anyone can do the same for their disease. The next steps — laboratory validation and clinical translation — require a team. But the design is ready to be picked up, tested, and, if it holds, carried to patients.
Explore the project
Therapeutic Program Architect
A disease-agnostic drug-development specialist — for any community, any disease.
Reach out
If this resonates with you — as a researcher, clinician, patient-advocate, funder, or biotech partner — I'd like to hear from you.
Work developed during the Built with Claude: Life Sciences Hackathon, 2026.