Weekly Tech+Bio Highlights #63: Quantum vs. AI Small Molecule Design
FDA’s pathway for custom gene editing, UK’s non-animal testing roadmap, OpenAI leads a biosecurity seed, 100x mRNA delivery & over $1B in fresh life sciences VC funds
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🤖 AI x Bio
(AI applications in drug discovery, biotech, and healthcare)
🔹 Experiment-driven ML for small-molecule design — Terray launched EMMI, an integrated microarray+AI platform built on 13B+ compound–target measurements and its COATI molecular foundation model, adding a new module that uses uncertainty-aware selection to boost potency-optimization efficiency ~3x across discovery programs.
🔹 Small-molecule generation: Quantum vs AI — in a working paper, Kendall Byler and Shahar Keinan show that the quantum-based QuADD platform produced more drug-like, higher-affinity, synthesizable molecules in ~30 minutes, outperforming an AI diffusion model that took ~40 hours and generated more diverse but less viable candidates.
🔹 BenchSci and Mila launched a multi-year collaboration to develop advanced predictive and generative models that automate hypothesis generation and assay prediction to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery.
🔹 Generative AI for anti-fibrotic peptides— Animate Biosciences launched a generative-AI platform that converts multi-omic insights from regenerative species into tailored peptide therapeutics, building a pipeline for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases across multiple organs.
🔹 AI-designed muscle-targeting AAV & Increasing ‘genetic agency’ — Dyno Therapeutics unveiled an AI-engineered AAV vector with improved muscle delivery and reduced liver exposure, high skeletal and cardiac transduction in primates at ~25x lower dose than typical muscle gene therapies.
🔹 Multi-omic dataset effort — Tempus and IFLI launched a multi-year study to build a large follicular lymphoma dataset using genomics, proteomics, and methylation profiling, to accelerate biomarker discovery and precision research.
🔹 AI-guided oncology pipeline progress — Lantern Pharma reported Q clinical and regulatory advances across its AI-driven cancer programs: early efficacy signals in multiple solid tumors, regulatory guidance for a planned pediatric CNS trial, and broader commercialization of its AI drug-discovery platform, with $12.4M in cash extending runway into ~Q3 2026.
🔹 Owkin released its biology-focused AI co-pilot on AWS Marketplace as a SaaS offering, enabling faster procurement and deployment of agentic research workflows powered by multimodal data and biological reasoning.
🔹 AI toxicology — Cellarity published an AI + multi-omics framework that predicts drug-induced liver injury using a large human hepatocyte transcriptomics dataset, achieving high accuracy and outperforming >20 standard safety models, with the tools released open-source (model and validation data).
🔹 Multimodal CRC biomarkers — Nucleai and the University of Glasgow partnered to use AI and spatial multi-omics data from a large polyp cohort to identify predictive biomarkers for colorectal cancer and improve early-risk stratification and surveillance.
🔹 Esophageal cancer biomarkers — BostonGene and Kyoto University partner to analyze multiomic tumor data from an ESCC trial, aiming to identify immune-linked biomarkers that guide targeted therapy development and patient stratification.
🔹 TCR atlas for autoimmunity — A stealth Third Rock Ventures company partnered with Parse Biosciences to generate a ~5M-receptor TCR atlas via the GigaLab platform, creating a resource to map immune drivers and accelerate autoimmune drug discovery.
🔹 AI agent for women’s health — Millie launched an AI assistant built on a new unified data platform that personalizes maternity support, automates routine questions and scheduling, and streamlines clinical workflows to boost efficiency across its growing clinic network.
🔹 Modular protein nanomaterials — UW researchers designed reusable protein building blocks that assemble into cages, lattices, and 3D crystals by engineering binding interfaces first, creating a more programmable toolkit for protein-based nanostructures.
🔹 Foundation-model pathology forecasting — MIT researchers used Bioptimus’ H-optimus-1 model, trained on >1M pathology slides, to predict six-month tumour progression from a single image with ~0.8 AUC.
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💰 Money Flows
(Funding rounds, IPOs, and M&A for startups and smaller companies)
🔹 AI + physics drug discovery — TandemAI raised a $22M Series A extension to scale its AI-and-physics-based discovery platform and wet-lab infrastructure, bringing total funding to ~$80M and supporting a pipeline that has produced 10+ clinical-bound candidates.
🔹 Reprogramming diseased cells — Scripta Therapeutics raised $12M seed funding to develop AI- and biology-driven drugs that modulate transcription factor activity, aiming to reshape disease pathways, starting with neurodegeneration.
🔹 Programmable miniprotein drug design — AI Proteins raised ~$42M Series A to advance its first-principles, de novo miniprotein platform and launch programs through a hub-and-spoke model, building on its earlier ~$18M seed round and a Bristol Myers Squibb collaboration valued up to ~$400M.
🔹 AI–brain data scaling — Beacon Biosignals raised $86M Series B to expand its AI platform built on large-scale home EEG and sleep data, growing its neurobiomarker dataset and supporting CNS drug development across major pharma partners (incl. Takeda, UCB, Syndeio).
🔹 Sofinnova Partners closed a €650M ($750M) early-stage life sciences fund, lifting its total capital raised over the past year to €1.5B and expanding support for biotech and medtech startups across Europe and the US.
🔹 Medicxi raised €500M for its latest fund to back asset-focused biotechs across stages, bringing its total capital raised over the past decade to >€2B and building on recent exits and acquisitions that generated >$1B in returns.
🔹 Oncology CRO transfer — JSR Life Sciences will sell Crown Bioscience to Adicon, moving its tumor-model and translational oncology services to a new owner while keeping its biospecimens unit in-house.
🔹 Fabric acquired UCM Digital Health, adding ~1M covered lives and 400 payer/employer clients, reinforcing its scale across a platform now serving 100M+ people nationwide.
🔹 AI-enabled biosecurity push — OpenAI led a $15M seed round for Red Queen Bio, a Helix Nano spinout developing AI-driven defenses against misuse of biological design tools, extending OpenAI’s recent biosecurity investing efforts.
🔹 Japan’s new global biotech CVC — Hiroki Takai announced the launch of TOHO Ventures, a ¥10B (~$64M) fund created by TOHO HOLDINGS and Global Brain to back drug-discovery and modality-focused startups mainly in Europe and the U.S., leveraging TOHO’s nationwide clinical and distribution networks to support commercialization.
🔹 UK accelerates shift to non-animal testing — The UK unveiled a national roadmap, announced by Lord Vallance, committing £75M to scale organ-on-chip, 3D bioprinting, and AI/in-silico models, alongside a new UK Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods to speed regulatory acceptance and phase out multiple animal tests by 2026–2030.
⚙️ Other Tech
(Innovations across quantum computing, BCIs, gene editing, and more)
🔹 BCI-enabled camera control — Neuralink brain-computer implant allowed an ALS patient to control a motorized webcam and communicate more fluidly, marking one of 12 implanted users with a combined ~15,000 hours of device use.
🔹 100x more potent mRNA delivery — MIT researchers engineered a new degradable lipid nanoparticle that boosts mRNA vaccine potency ~100x in mice while lowering liver tox, enabling equal immune responses at ~1/100 the dose of current FDA-approved LNPs.
🔹 Induced-proximity oncology collaboration — General Proximity partnered with Daiichi Sankyo to use its OmniTAC platform to discover effector–target pairs for next-gen induced-proximity cancer therapeutics, expanding the platform’s reach to traditionally undruggable targets.
🏛️ Bioeconomy & Society
(News on centers, regulatory updates, and broader biotech ecosystem developments)
🔹 New FDA path for custom gene editing — FDA leaders outlined a “plausible mechanism” pathway enabling individualized gene-editing therapies to gain approval based on demonstrated target engagement and biologic plausibility, aiming to scale single-patient successes like baby KJ’s treatment for rare diseases.
Read also:
Three Big Ideas in Aging Research That Could Shift the Therapeutic Landscape