Sample Swaps Silently Corrupt Bioinformatics Results
Sample swaps are the silent killer in bioinformatics. Your results look clean—but are you sure you're analyzing the right samples? https://t.co/w0H0hvYzHB
Cytokinetics Stock Overpriced Amid Strong Aficamten Data
Aficamten’s clinical data is strong, but Cytokinetics’ stock price already reflects peak sales. With competition from Camzyos and launch risks ahead, the risk/reward looks skewed at current levels. Biotech
Upcoming Meeting to Shape Gerotherapeutic Regulatory Frameworks
Affecting the Aging Trajectory: Regulatory Constructs for Gerotherapeutic Drug, Biologic & Device Development 👉 “On May 27, 2026, the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, in collaboration with @ARPA_H and the @xprize Foundation, will convene a hybrid public meeting on exploring...
CRISPR Base Editing Provides Irreversible Microbial Biocontainment
A CRISPR-dCas9 base editing system now enables irreversible shutdown of essential genes in engineered microbes, offering a robust biocontainment strategy that minimizes escape and enhances biosafety for industrial and therapeutic applications. biotechnology
20 Years of iPSC Research: From Discovery to Applications
Two decades of induced pluripotent stem cell research: From discovery to diverse applications https://t.co/L9cObPcVwk https://t.co/gcoiPh6yqJ
AI‑Created Bio Designs Lack Expert Oversight
bioslop (noun) - biological molecules and/or designs made by Ai without the oversight or review of a subject matter expert or specialist LLM
CRISPR Screens Reveal RNA Targets that Boost T‑cell Killing
High-content CRISPR activation screens identify synthetically lethal RNA-based mechanisms to sensitize cancer cells to targeted T cell cytotoxicity https://t.co/gi3hEvoi9V https://t.co/njFRebLRVo
Isomorphic Labs Eyes $2B Raise, Biotech’s Second‑largest
Great scoop from @RebeccaTorrenc5 & @mhbergen on Isomorphic Labs in "advanced discussions to raise more than $2 billion in a new round of funding" led by Thrive Capital Would be second-largest VC raise ever in biotech, only behind $3B for...
Choosing Traits: Mercy vs Competitive Advantage in Embryo Selection
Listening to @hsu_steve and @AlexTISYoung discuss the ethics of embryo selection is disorienting. Seems disingenuous to laugh off the difference between screening out Huntington’s and optimizing for height or IQ, as if the distinction is some kind of philosophical naivety. A...
Stop Wasting Hours Matching Sample IDs Across Assays
1/ How many hours do bioinformaticians lose matching sample IDs across assays? Too many. And it’s avoidable. Let’s talk about why this happens—and how to stop it. https://t.co/wxR6DIMzPv
AI-Driven Method Creates Robust Clinical Trial Surrogate Markers
Super interesting via @oziadias & @DeanKateBaicker on an approach to generating robust surrogate markers, urgently needed but elusive, for clin trials, essentially via channeling the AI-enabled empiric analysis that I associate w PRS (cc @pnatarajanmd) https://t.co/FDP4Ym8ycC
Low‑Cost Vaccines and Open Science Aren’t Evil
Hmmm, presumably making low-cost vaccines to help humanity, $2-4 per dose, no onerous patent restrictions, pioneering a way to bypass big pharma, helping the nation through a terrible pandemic, writing books with academic presses on history of science/medicine, constitute evil?
SuperDNA: AI-Driven Biotech Hub Accelerates Drug Discovery
Welcome to SuperDNA Up City - this will be the true automation biotechnology + AI Disneyland with 10 thousand humans in the loop. Most people do not realize that even today, with 30 developmental candidates some of which often trigger...
China’s Rapid Dead-Virus Vaccines Match Severe-Case Protection
small point, but the record time is a bit of exaggeration. China developed two old-fashioned dead virus vaccines in roughly the same time-frame. They were less effective in preventing the original strain, but comparably effective in preventing serious illness and...
Gene Therapy Restores Six-Year-Old's Sight Like Magic
The mother of a six-year-old girl who had life-changing eye gene therapy says it is "like someone waved a magic wand and restored her sight https://t.co/IU3YRMtJSG
INBX to Release INBRX‑106 Phase 2 Data Monday
$INBX reporting INBRX-106 ph2 data on Monday. This is the ox40 cancer drug that reportedly drew interest from Merck and others?
MRNA Nanoparticles Reprogram T Cells In Vivo, Show Promise
Impressive. In vivo reprogramming of killer T cells with mRNA-nanoparticle packaging in non-human primates. Multiple use cases in the clinic vs pathogens and cancer, no less an alternative version vs autoimmune diseases https://t.co/ddhebnxvkE @SciImmunology
Building New Tools Is Valid Even When Alternatives Exist
I've never been a fan of the argument of "why build y if x already exists?" That's a silly stance to hold. "Why do people keep making new car brands? We got plenty of cars on the road already..." I'm gonna make...
We’ve Launched the Most AI‑discovered Longevity Drugs
This is cool. Not sure why you need so much money if you are making drugs faster and cheaper. But it is great - maybe I should be thinking about raising more to scale. At the end of the day,...
Smart Homes Integrated with Biotech Extend Lifespan
A bigger house is not going to give you significantly longer life. But a much smarter house integrated into the advanced biotechnology research and clinical ecosystem will. Very happy to see our chapter with CY Leung published in Springer Nature...
Billion-Dollar Ideas Lurk in Free PubMed Data
Martin Shkreli came on MFM a while back and told Shaan and I something interesting: PubMed has 40M+ biomedical papers. It's the government database of every medical innovation ever logged. And it's 100% free. He told us if you sit there and read long...
Patents Aren't the Magic Key to Drug Development
The $3 billion number is hokey for a number of reasons, but the point is that there is not some magical sauce that allows for drugs to be developed when financed by patent monopolies, but not by upfront funding.
Mabwell IPO Highlights China’s Rising Biologics Powerhouse
Do you remember the company which sold their IL11 nanobody to Google Calico after it realized that after 13 years in the business they need a drug for aging? The company is called Mabwell and they just listed in Hong...
Rapamycin's 50-Year Odyssey: From Easter Island to Medicine
The rapamycin sTORy: 50-year journey from Easter Island to the frontiers of biology and medicine https://t.co/Jn67QrGVi6 https://t.co/dwGPgUVB83
ZYME ADC
Catching up with $ZYME pan-RAS inhibitor payload ADCs from #AACR26. Seems the setting for each one is tumours that are RAS-mutated as well as expressing the target antigen (PTK7, Ly6E or Claudin18.2). https://t.co/hljX5soZQi
PTCT Jumps 17% on Strong Drug Uptake
$PTCT up 17% on results, really liked that one after writing up this week, nice value with strong uptake in its new drug, and those Jan. calls kept accumulating https://t.co/HEe8G2Sjdx
NEJM Publishes Moderna Flu Data After FDA Refusal
A Friday footnote: The New England Journal of Medicine has published the Moderna influenza vaccine data -- the same that led the FDA's CBER division to refuse to review the vaccine under Vinay Prasad. (That decision, called a refuse-to-file or...
Organ‑Specific Aging Clocks Reveal Multi‑Omics Lifespan Patterns
The big advance in the science of human aging is the ability to quantify it and relate the metrics to health and disease. A new paper today @CellCellPress takes this to the next level with organ clocks and multiple biologic...
Psilocybin Shows Promise After Decades of Failed Cocaine Treatments
For 50 years the National Institute on Drug Abuse has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to find an effective cocaine addiction medication. After 100+ molecules & many hundreds of studies nothing has been FDA approved. It's the Holy Grail...
Industrial Microbiome: Affordable Year-Long Service for $75
Industrial microbiome products are a slept-on sector of the bioeconomy. A year supply for $75. Microbes as a Service. https://t.co/aWyLZ00qMM
Metformin's Primary Action Is Gut, Not Liver
Metformin, one of the most commonly prescribed drugs, was thought to work via the liver. Check that. It's primarily through the gut. @NatMetabolism https://t.co/i2CpZip61B https://t.co/bhsI7p7SYx
Check Gene A–B Co‑Expression in Your Single‑Cell Data
1/ You have a clear question: Is gene A and gene B co-expressed in my cell type of interest? You feel ready. You have single-cell data. https://t.co/9ET61foUET
Biologists Leveraging AI Will Outpace Those Who Don't
1/ AI won't replace you. But a biologist using AI will. Especially in bioinformatics, where the questions never stop coming. https://t.co/VYCu5ukfCT
GLP‑1 Breakthrough Costs $500/Month, Limiting Access
After catching my breath (unusual for GLP-1 story to discuss their costs approvingly), I suspect both that @continetti (not unusually) is likely directionally right (& I share enthusiasm for free market) - but - at $500/mo for transformative drug -...
Moderna Launches mRNA Hantavirus Vaccine Development in 2024
Did ya know… Moderna began working on an mRNA vaccine for hantavirus in 2024. $MRNA
AI Unifies Fragmented Spatial Multi‑omics Into Comprehensive Tissue Atlases
A new AI-powered method integrates fragmented spatial multi-omics data, enabling unified tissue atlases and accurate prediction of unmeasured molecular layers across diverse tissues and species. bioinformatics
Finger‑prick Blood Test Accurately Detects Active TB, Predicts Risk
A finger-prick blood test measuring immune response can accurately detect active tuberculosis and moderately predict future disease in household contacts, offering potential for more targeted TB screening and prevention. tuberculosis
ART Reverses HIV‑Induced Aging, Cutting Years Off Biological Clock
Great news for HIV positive patients. A study presented at ESCMID Global 2026 found that untreated HIV can accelerate biological aging by up to a decade, but antiretroviral therapy can reverse this effect by nearly four years within about 18...
STING Pathway Emerges as New Cancer Immunotherapy Frontier
The number of new potential ways to rev up the immune response to cancer keeps expanding. Today it's STING-ing it. @ScienceMagazine https://t.co/p9g0Mmc8kG https://t.co/LbKfODQkO1
CAPR Sues NS Pharma over Launch Delays, Pricing Disputes
$CAPR is suing NS Pharma, its deramiocel commercial partner. Capricor alleges NS Pharma is not doing enough to prepare for commercial launch + some pricing mishegas. 8K https://t.co/7iFyLRhKsq
International Team Launches Hantavirus Vaccine Development
JUST IN: Scientists from the UK, US, and South Africa formed a team to develop a hantavirus vaccine, per BBC
Moderna CEO Labels Spike Protein “Garbage” In New Vaccine
Whoa. 🫣 This is incredible. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, gave an interview on April 17 to the "why should I trust you?" podcast in which he referred to the spike protein — famously in all the Covid vaccines —...
Preprints Safeguard Vaccine Safety Data From FDA Suppression
"The Paper That Didn't Disappear" FDA reportedly held back several vaccine safety papers headed to publication. Fortunately, one was on medRxiv and remains available. Why preprints matter; my latest Substack: https://t.co/YfTbkEPBU4 Also discussed in #healthandveritas podcast. https://t.co/k24zPtoGA2
STAT Live Event in SF Featuring INSM and BBIO CEOs
Today is an opportune moment to mention STAT's next live event in San Francisco on May 19. I will be chatting on stage with $INSM CEO Will Lewis and $BBIO CEO Neil Kumar. Full agenda and registration here: https://t.co/YtXTTuz1Nv
AI Poised to Spark Trillion‑dollar Biotech Revolution
Last day @synbiobeta and had a fascinating discussion with my friend @andrewhessel about the SynBio space. His insight was that SynBio and Biotech feels very much like the AI space pre LLM acceleration. AI will accelerate Biotech and Genetic Agency. Today's biotech...
CRISPR Selectively Eliminates KRAS‑mutant Cancer Cells
The CRISPR Killer as in KRAS mutated cancer cells https://t.co/y1zrmYbIAQ Explainer thread @N8Krah co-author https://t.co/CIweqZMUqY
AI and Robotics Reshape IVF, Eye Gene Editing
Researchers are using AI to identify promising sperm and embryos, developing robotic systems that could automate parts of the IVF process, and even exploring controversial genetic editing techniques designed to prevent inherited disease.
Hidden Microproteins Reshape Our View of Disease
"The human genome encodes for a new category of molecule" "The ‘dark proteome’ is upending our understanding of human disease" @Nature "Expanding the human proteome with microproteins and peptideins" https://t.co/5ncSKGKHBH https://t.co/2Rx65FJCbG @statnews @MeganMolteni https://t.co/7mATxNQ1EO @TheEconomist
Choosing a Reference Genome Stalls Bioinformatics Before Coding
Bioinformatics is hard before you even write a single line of code. Here's why. 1/ You haven’t started your DNA-seq analysis. You haven’t aligned a read. And yet you’ve already hit a wall. Which human genome to use? https://t.co/nAj5MOqEFm
SGLT2 Inhibitors Cut Cardiovascular Death by 14%
As a medical school professor: when I trained, "diabetes drugs" meant blood-sugar drugs. That ceiling has been broken. Meta-analysis in Am J Med (Jaiswal et al, U Chicago, Mar 26 2026) pooled 18 RCTs, n=95,913 patients with diabetes, heart failure, or...