>FASTA_18

Electro-oncology, Arc's virtual cell, RUBI wins EPO prize, Basecamp Research discovers 1M new species, Eli Health’s Hormometer, Eli Lilly to buy Verve for $1B, CRISPR crops in Mexico, LatAm’s Nobels

>FASTA presents weekly short reads of the biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy as dessert | Read in under 5 min | Emails every Wednesday | Follow on LinkedIn and X.

1. Electro-oncology

If the term bioelectricity rings a bell, chances are you’re thinking of Michael Levin’s research with two-headed worms, or the promise of regenerating human limbs like axolotls do. Wondering whether this groundbreaking research will actually save human lives within your lifetime? I’ve got good news for you:

After discovering and defining the first-ever, only-electrical biomarker for brain cancer, Coherence neuro just came out of stealth with SOMA-1: a wireless, coin-sized implant that stimulates and monitors brain activity to treat the cancer. They will start human trials this October — and yes, straight out of a sci-fi movie, the device connects to the SOMA app for real-time tracking.

2. Arc’s virtual cell

Arc Institute has done it again. Their latest model, State, predicts how gene expression changes in different stem cells, cancer cells, and immune cells, in response to drugs, cytokines, and genetic perturbations. This tool could help researchers discover new drugs with fewer off-target effects and boost clinical success rates, as only 1 in 10 make it through today.

I like that they acknowledge that, despite the hundreds of millions of cell data they used for training, the insights provided by these models are still correlation, not cause. And, in Niko McCarty’s brilliant words, “learning causality is essential for building a true virtual cell model grounded in biological mechanisms”.

3. RUBI wins EPO prize

RUBI’s enzymes literally turn CO₂ into cellulose for textiles and other products, using 10x less energy and CapEx than fermentation or chemical catalysis. They’re currently piloting with Walmart, Patagonia and H&M. The European Patent Office is awarding them €20.000 through the Young Inventors Prize.

‘Sustainability’ is only one of many criteria brands can optimize for. As synthetic and functional materials dominate the market, no amount of CO2 offset is good enough if your process is too expensive or doesn’t scale. I’m glad to see RUBI as one of those companies growing through the tricky biomaterials maze.