>FASTA_14
Future House’s AI discovered a cure to blindness, CZI’s TranscriptFormer, Lumina’s cavities vaccine, American Alliance for Biomanufacturing, A biotech romantic drama
>FASTA sequences the biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, plants and algorithms, funding rounds and bankruptcies, plus some biotech philosophy as dessert | Read in less than 5 min | Follow along on LinkedIn and X | Note: trying out a shorter format with more news this time.
Regeneron acquired 23&Me for $250M, and with it, a number of target-indication pairs 60% greater than all public GWAS datasets combined. The company will continue operations as a personal genomics service.
Future House’s multi-agent AI system discovered a previously approved drug could as a promising AMD treatment. It proposed hypotheses, designed experiments, analyzed the data, iterated on it, and wrote a final manuscript with figures — I didn’t know that they’re a non-profit funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
A CRISPR-based method to physically move RNAs between different membranes and organelles (h/t
).- and ’s series on taste and science, especially how AI makes tacit knowledge visible.
E. coli was used as a biocomputer to estimate COVID-19 severity from plasma using only bacterial growth curves.
Mexican biofounder Andrey Zarur shares his optimism about Mexico’s future as a globally competitive biomanufacturing hub — I want to believe but I’m yet to see 👇
Meanwhile, the American Alliance for Biomanufacturing (Biotech Avengers, kinda) was established to enhance US global competitiveness in bioproducts (code for beat China) — What does this actually mean in practice?
The Chan-Zuck Institute built the first generative, multi-species model for single-cell transcriptomics. Trained on 112 million cells from 12 different species, the model uses protein coding gene tokens and corresponding gene expression counts to learn biologically meaningful features. It can do zero-shot cell type identification, translate findings from one species might into human cells, and more.
Lumina’s consumer probiotic for cavities and bad breath was built on decades of research that prove that such a probiotic is broadly safe and effective in rats and humans through a one-shot application. Still, it’s fair to ask how it may disrupt the gut microbiome and be passed along when we, uh, kiss each other.
“Yo, S. mutans cause cavities by metabolizing sugars into lactic acid that erodes our teeth, so we could just genetically engineer it to produce alcohol instead, colonize our mouths with it, and use it as a cavities vaccine. We could make it produce a weak antibiotic to compete with other oral bacteria, and for safety, make it unable to swap genes… We sell it as a $250 consumer probiotic - not a drug - that prevents bad smell and protects your teeth, and boom: we become millionaires” — Is the text I would’ve sent to a friend had I worked on this years ago. Consumer GM probiotics seem like such a market-tasty low-hanging fruit.
Dr. He, The Chinese scientist who gene edited the babies in 2018, recently married Cathy Tie, the young Canadian cofounder of the new glowing bunnies startup. He is now a Twitter celebrity with over 130k followers and claims to have founded a germline editing company dubbed Cathy Medicine. Allegedly, the Chinese government is now preventing Cathy from entering China and He from leaving — A heavenly biotech romantic tragedy… or a smart PR strategy that has, btw, accrued over $2M USD in crypto?! Someone please enlighten me.
