Weekly Tech+Bio Highlights #64: Eli Lilly Reaches $1 Trillion Valuation
Merck's $3B AI drug discovery deal, new open-source virtual cell initiative, AI designing full-length antibodies, Europe’s first agentic AI infrastructure for biology & more
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🤖 AI x Bio
(AI applications in drug discovery, biotech, and healthcare)
🔹 AI-designed antibodies reach drug-like quality — Nabla Bio unveils JAM-2, an AI model that designs high-affinity, developable antibodies with hit rates up to 70% against user-defined epitopes.
🔹 Ginkgo Bioworks launches the Virtual Cell Pharmacology Initiative (VCPI), an open-source framework aimed at generating 12B+ pharmacological data points to support AI drug discovery, featuring a standardized reference cell line and high-throughput DRUG-seq screening platform.
🔹 Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys and NIH unveil DeepTarget, an AI tool that predicts anti-cancer mechanisms of small molecules by integrating drug and genetic screens, enabling cancer drug repurposing by identifying primary and secondary targets.
🔹 Biohub debuts AI Workspace for single-cell analysis — The new tool lets researchers analyze single-cell data using AI models like scVI and TranscriptFormer, enabling rapid annotation, disease comparison, cross-species mapping, and phenotype matching via integration with CELLxGENE datasets.
🔹 AI reaches atomic precision in antibody design — New data from Chai-2 shows it can design full-length antibodies with high developability, match Cryo-EM structures across five targets and generate functional binders against hard-to-drug GPCRs.
🔹 Owkin launches Europe’s first agentic AI infrastructure for biology — In partnership with Gustave Roussy and Charité, Owkin unveils a pan-European platform to structure biomedical data for AI-powered research and drug development.
🔹 AI agents uncover hidden longevity drugs in public data — Researchers developed ClockBase Agent to autonomously analyze over 2 million molecular profiles, reportedly identifying 500+ overlooked anti-aging interventions and experimentally validating one—Ouabain—for reversing biological age in mice.
🔹 AI accelerates CRISPR genome editing innovation — A new review in Nature Reviews Genetics outlines how AI models are transforming genome editing by optimizing guide RNAs, engineering novel enzymes, and integrating virtual models to streamline therapeutic development.
🔹 Philips and Edwards Lifesciences unveil DeviceGuide, a real-time AI tool to assist heart valve implant procedures by tracking Edwards’ Pascal Ace device inside the beating heart, enhancing precision in mitral regurgitation treatments.
🔹 Simulating the gut to decode disease — UC San Diego researchers developed a genome-scale modeling tool to map how gut microbes respond to diet and disease, revealing key metabolic shifts in IBD and enabling personalized insights into microbiome-linked health conditions.
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🚜 Market Movers
(News from established pharma and tech giants)
🔹 Eli Lilly becomes the first pharmaceutical company to reach a $1T market cap, driven by surging demand for its weight-loss and diabetes drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, which generated $10.1B in Q3 2025 revenue.
🔹 Merck KGaA strikes a potentially $3B+ AI drug discovery deal with Valo Health — Merck teams up with Valo to accelerate Parkinson’s drug discovery using AI trained on 17M patient records, marking a major return to the field after past setbacks and bolstering its pharma pipeline post-SpringWorks acquisition.
🔹 Johnson & Johnson acquires Halda Therapeutics for $3.05B, gaining access to its RIPTAC cancer drug platform and lead prostate cancer therapy HLD-0915, in a move that strengthens J&J’s oncology pipeline.
🔹 GSK selects Flagship’s Quotient Therapeutics and ProFound Therapeutics as its first biotech partners in a $7B collaboration, signing feasibility deals to discover novel targets for respiratory and liver diseases using somatic genomics and protein detection platforms.
🔹 GE HealthCare is going to acquire imaging software firm Intelerad for $2.3B to expand its cloud-first diagnostic ecosystem, aiming to boost recurring SaaS revenues and integrate AI across hospital, ambulatory, and teleradiology settings.
🔹 Freenome inks $200M+ deal with Roche to advance early cancer detection — Roche gains ex-US rights to multiomics tests, while Freenome gets $75M equity and access to plasma biobanks and data to accelerate lung cancer screening and validation.
💰 Money Flows
(Funding rounds, IPOs, and M&A for startups and smaller companies)
🔹 AI Proteins raises $42M Series A to advance its miniprotein drug platform using a hub-and-spoke model, with plans to develop selective, durable minibinders targeting receptors like TNFR1.
🔹 Profluent raises $106M Series B led by Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions to scale frontier AI models for protein design, expanding its platform for genome editors, antibodies, and enzymes across therapeutics, agriculture, and biomanufacturing.
🔹 Function Health raises $298M Series B at a $2.5B valuation to power its AI health tracking platform, integrating lab tests, diagnostics, and clinical expertise, while launching a doctor-trained Medical Intelligence Lab to deliver personalized insights.
🔹 Lumexa Imaging files for IPO aiming to raise up to $200M, positioning itself as the second-largest U.S. outpatient imaging provider with 184 sites, leveraging AI tools to enhance diagnostic efficiency and reduce operating costs.
🔹 Cornerstone Robotics raises $200M to accelerate global commercialization of its Sentire surgical robot system, following China approval and U.K. clinical trials, backed by undisclosed global strategic and institutional investors.
🔹 Beacon Biosignals raises $86M Series B to develop a EEG and sleep data neurodiagnostic dataset to advance the application of brain health biomarkers for conditions like depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and sleep apnea.
🔹 Abbott acquires Exact Sciences for $23B, marking the largest diagnostics deal to date, adding Cologuard and multi-cancer blood tests to expand its diagnostics portfolio into precision oncology.
🔹 Cellbyte raises $2.75M to streamline drug launches with AI — Backed by Frontline Ventures and Y Combinator, Cellbyte’s platform helps pharma teams analyze regulatory, pricing, and clinical data in real time to accelerate go-to-market strategies.
🔹 QSimulate raises new seed funding, hits $11M total — Backed by Embark Ventures, the company also released QUELO v2.3, enhancing quantum-powered simulations for larger drug molecules like peptides, advancing AI-driven drug discovery.
⚙️ Other Tech
(Innovations across quantum computing, BCIs, gene editing, and more)
🔹 Digital brain milestone — Scientists created one of the most detailed simulations of a whole mouse cortex using Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer, modeling 10 million neurons and 26 billion synapses to study brain function and disease with sub-cellular precision.
🔹 Tessera Therapeutics to begin first human trial of its in vivo gene writing platform in December, targeting alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency with TSRA-196 in a 72-patient study, marking a key milestone for Flagship’s $580M-backed biotech.
🔹 Speech-restoring brain implant enters human trials — Paradromics receives FDA approval to begin testing its BCI in people with severe motor impairment, aiming to enable synthesized speech by decoding neural signals at up to 200 bits per second.
🔹 Precise Bio completes the world’s first human cornea transplant using a 3D-printed, lab-grown implant made from cultured eye cells, marking a breakthrough in regenerative ophthalmology and tackling global donor tissue shortages.
🔹 Scribe Therapeutics reports strong preclinical data for three CRISPR-based programs lowering key cardiovascular risk factors in animals, including gene silencer STX-1150, and plans to move into the clinic targeting broader patient populations.
🔹 Human-cell bone marrow model breaks new ground — University of Basel scientists engineered a fully human 3D bone marrow system using stem cells and bone-like scaffolds, replicating key features of the endosteal niche for blood cancer research, drug testing, and future personalized therapies.
🏛️ Bioeconomy & Society
(News on centers, regulatory updates, and broader biotech ecosystem developments)
🔹 Brain organoids spark debate over ethics and hype in biocomputing — As labs and startups explore brain organoids for biocomputing, researchers warn that inflated claims around “organoid intelligence” could mislead the public and risk overregulation, potentially undermining vital research into neurological diseases and drug safety.
🔹 UK Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee warns the government must urgently reform drug pricing and access processes to restore confidence in the life sciences sector, citing concerns over NICE’s complexity and US trade influence on UK domestic health policy.
🔹 NIH grant cuts have disrupted at least 383 clinical trials involving over 74,000 patients, disproportionately affecting infectious disease research and raising concerns over long-term impacts on patient care and scientific progress.
🔹 U.S. aims to reclaim biotech edge — A bipartisan bill proposes to establish a National Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Center of Excellence to boost domestic production, reduce reliance on foreign supply chains, and accelerate innovation critical to health, security, and workforce development.
Read also:
Three Big Ideas in Aging Research That Could Shift the Therapeutic Landscape
The Ginkgo Virtual Cell Pharmacology Initiative is fascinatin with the 12B+ data point target. Open-source frameworks like this could realy accelerate the whole AI drug discovery space if they manage to standardize the reference cell lines. Wonder how long before we see models trained on this that actualy outperform proprietary datasets?