Weekly Tech+Bio Highlights #70: Signals from a Quieter Week
Isomorphic Labs x J&J platform deal, LLM “gym” for pharma R&D, Absci’s new antibody model, and more
This week was quieter than the prior couple of weeks and the JPM Healthcare conference orbit, with the clearest signal being another “platform-first” pharma partnership: Alphabet-backed Isomorphic Labs teaming with Johnson & Johnson around AI-driven, multi-modality design, with a timeline update on Isomorphic’s first human trials of its own AI-designed drugs.
On the healthcare AI side, OpenEvidence, with its “ChatGPT for doctors”, raised again and is now being priced around a $12B valuation. In Europe, against a tense global backdrop at Davos, Ursula von der Leyen announced “EU-Inc.” as a push toward a single, digital-first company setup across member states, a corporate-structure project that founder and investor groups have been publicly pushing since 2024.
AI drug developer Insilico Medicine got another FDA IND for a brain-penetrant NLRP3 program, also rolling out “Science MMAI Gym,” a training and evaluation framework it says can tune general LLMs for pharma R&D, pitched as a membership offering for external partners. A bit earlier, another gen-AI drugmaker Absci released an antibody design model built to iterate with rapid wet-lab feedback.
Hi! This is BiopharmaTrend’s weekly newsletter, Where Tech Meets Bio, where we explore technologies, breakthroughs, and cutting-edge companies.
If this newsletter is in your inbox, it’s because you subscribed, or someone thought you might enjoy it. In either case, you can subscribe directly by clicking this button:
🤖 AI x Bio
(AI applications in drug discovery, biotech, and healthcare)
🔹 Isomorphic Labs and J&J join forces on AI drug discovery — Alphabet-backed Isomorphic Labs partnered with Johnson & Johnson to apply AI to multi-modality drug design, targeting hard-to-drug diseases. Isomorphic now expects to begin human trials of its AI-designed drugs by the end of 2026, a year later than previously planned.
🧬 Basecamp Research reportedly achieves programmable gene insertion — In a preprint, the UK-based biotech describes an AI model, EDEN, developed with Nvidia and trained on 9.7T biological tokens, that enables targeted insertion of large DNA sequences into the human genome. The team reports lab data showing >90% tumor clearance using CAR T cells modified with this approach, and high success rates designing novel antimicrobial peptides. EDEN is presented as a potential advance beyond current CRISPR-based editing limits.
🔹 Insilico Medicine expands AI drug discovery push with $66M CNS deal and new LLM training platform — Insilico partnered with Hygtia to co-develop an AI-designed brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitor for neurodegenerative diseases, while also launching Science MMAI Gym to transform general LLMs into pharma-grade scientific engines.
🔹 Recently, Absci debuted new antibody design model, targeting hard-to-drug proteins — Absci launched Origin-1, a protein design model using rapid wet-lab validation to tackle elusive targets like GPCRs, with clinical trials underway for hair loss and endometriosis and a two-year, low-cost development cycle.
🔹 Europe launches €60M LIGAND-AI project for drug discovery — a 5-year, EU-funded initiative led by UCL, Pfizer, and the Structural Genomics Consortium brings together 18 partners across 9 countries to advance AI-driven drug design.
🔹 Tempus launches AI tool to guide cancer test decisions — Following its $81M acquisition of Paige AI, Tempus unveiled Paige Predict, an AI-powered pathology tool that analyzes tissue slides to predict biomarker presence, optimizing molecular test selection across 16 cancer types.
🔹 Lantern Pharma received its third orphan designation for LP-284, this time for soft tissue sarcomas, expanding its AI-driven oncology pipeline targeting DNA repair deficiencies in rare and aggressive cancers.
🔹 Following its $200M Series C early this year, Soley Therapeutics published research introducing its “Live Cell Dynamics” platform—a machine learning-powered, label-free imaging approach that captures how cells dynamically respond to drug stress over time.
🔹 SF-based Elucidata launches AI Lab to tackle edge-case failures in biomedical AI — Aiming to address out-of-distribution data issues in drug discovery and diagnostics, Elucidata’s new AI Lab will develop tools to detect and operationalize rare biological signals.
This newsletter reaches over 11K industry professionals from leading organizations across the globe. To reserve your sponsor slot in one of the upcoming issues, contact us at info@biopharmatrend.com
💰 Money Flows
(Funding rounds, IPOs, and M&A for startups and smaller companies)
🔹 “ChatGPT for doctors” raises $250M at $12B valuation — OpenEvidence secured a $250M Series D to expand its AI-powered medical search engine, now used in over 10,000 U.S. care centers and supporting 18M monthly consultations by 40% of physicians.
🔹 UK backs autonomous lab research — The UK’s ARIA agency awarded ~£500K each to 12 teams (incl. Lila Sciences) to develop AI scientists that can autonomously design, run, and analyze lab experiments.
🔹 BIOMAKERS raises $8M to scale AI oncology platform — The San Francisco company secured funding to expand its AI-driven precision oncology infrastructure and clinical-genomic dataset across 20+ countries, supporting drug and diagnostic development.
🔹 Florida-based Neuropacs secured over $1M in seed funding to expand its MRI-based AI platform for diagnosing Parkinson’s and related disorders, aiming for broader clinical adoption.
⚙️ Other Tech
(Innovations across quantum computing, BCIs, gene editing, and more)
🔹 Aspect Biosystems and Novo Nordisk expand partnership for 3D-printed diabetes implants — Vancouver-based Aspect gained access to Novo’s stem cell and immune-shielding tech to develop implantable pancreatic tissue, advancing a potential type 1 diabetes cure using its AI-driven bioprinting platform.
🔹 Scribe Therapeutics to trial one-time CRISPR therapy for high cholesterol — will begin Phase 1 trials in mid-2026 for a gene-silencing therapy targeting PCSK9, aiming to durably lower LDL cholesterol without cutting DNA.
🔹 Biomimetic brain model matching animal learning — MIT, Dartmouth, and Stony Brook researchers built a biologically realistic digital brain model that learned a visual task like lab animals and uncovered overlooked neurons tied to errors, offering a new tool for understanding cognition and testing neurotherapeutics.
🔹 Teitur to use NeuraLight’s digital biomarkers in Parkinson’s trial — Teitur will integrate NeuraLight’s eye-movement-based brain function measures, powered by computer vision and neural signal analysis, to track drug impact on neural circuits in its upcoming TT-P34 trial.
🔹 Gut neurons and epithelial cells team up to drive immunity — New research in Nature shows TRPV1+ sensory neurons activate tuft cells to trigger parasite expulsion and tissue remodeling, revealing a neuroimmune circuit uncovered by Weill Cornell and Allen Institute researchers.
🔹 a16z: Genetic ‘Surgery’ May Need New Rules — In a case likened to a medical moonshot, a baby with a rare mutation was cured using a bespoke gene-editing therapy tailored to his DNA. a16z’s Jorge Conde argues for a new regulatory framework, akin to CLIA labs for diagnostics, that treats such precision genetic interventions as customizable procedures, not one-size-fits-all products, to unlock access for ultra-rare disease patients.
🏛️ Bioeconomy & Society
(News on centers, regulatory updates, and broader biotech ecosystem developments)
🔹 Von der Leyen announced ‘EU-Inc.’ to unify startup rules across Europe — At Davos, the European Commission unveiled EU-Inc., a long-awaited initiative to create a single, digital-first corporate structure enabling companies to register in 48 hours and scale across borders, aiming to close the tech gap with the U.S. and China.
🔹 EU launches FAST‑EU pilot to speed up clinical trial approvals — Starting 30 January 2026, the initiative will streamline multi-national trial assessments as part of broader EU efforts to strengthen clinical research and prepare for the upcoming EU Biotech Act.
🔹 FDA and EMA align on AI standards in drug development — U.S. and European regulators issued joint guidance on responsible AI use across the drug lifecycle, emphasizing data integrity, traceability, and auditability, especially in manufacturing and quality oversight.
🔹 FDA proposes new pathway for individualized genetic therapies — a multi-author editorial in Molecular Therapy supports the FDA’s proposed framework for customized genetic treatments, advocating for standardized, platform-based development of therapies like ASOs and gene editors to treat ultra-rare mutations, with shared data infrastructure to accelerate collective learning.
Read also:
Three Big Ideas in Aging Research That Could Shift the Therapeutic Landscape
Excellent analysis, the 'EU-Inc.' concept definitely resonated, it's about time we streamline digital integration, even if it sound like a corporate rebranding project.