Patrick Fuller

Wow - 2 ex-Meta employees launch EvolutionaryScale landing $142m to advance AI in biology. EvolutionaryScale has introduced ESM3, a cutting-edge language model for biology that predicts protein sequences, structures, and functions. This model can simulate millions of years of evolution, generating new proteins with potential applications in medicine, research, and sustainability. ESM3 represents a significant advancement in AI's ability to design and engineer biological systems. There will be comparisons with AlphaFold3, intrigued where this goes... https://lnkd.in/dhtQDtsA #AIinDrugDiscovery #genomics #proteomics

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I think we're seeing a whole new Illumina strategy for defending the mid-market from Element Biosciences competition. I for one was thinking too narrowly to see this - figured it was all about Aviti vs NextSeq. But I think we're starting to see a clever three-pronged Illumina strategy: (1) Times are hard, why buy a mid instrument for $400K when you can just skip that and send your samples out to someone with an X? (2) High throughput is where it's at, here's a cheap NovaSeq X, why not stretch a little for that and be able to hang with the cool kids? (3) Have you seen our new MiSeq i100? Here take this Lego one. It's just $100K, you can most of your stuff with that, and just send out for the big stuff. Sure, kills NextSeq sales too, but that's easy pain for Illumina to bear, but existential for Element. Here's Illumina CFO Ankur Dhingra spelling it out for Wolfe's Doug Schenkel: "...customers, because of the macro [economic/grant] issues, have been transitioning their sample volume to high throughput. And a lot of our mid throughput customers who are constrained by that macro environment are resorting to sending their samples to either core labs or other sequencing providers." "...the constrained environment is making people take decisions on what are they going to invest in their lab or until money frees up, they're going to take advantage of the lower high throughput [X-based sequencing as a service] pricing that is available externally." "I do think there are additional two factors that are coming our way from an Illumina perspective. We have said we will be launching a slightly lower throughput version of NovaSeq X with a single flow cell. And that is at a price point which is well below 1 million. So, there is a potential that some of our mid throughput customers may see some value there. And also, the higher end of the new MiSeq i100 that we have launched has capabilities that can seep into some of the mid throughput kind of requirements as well. So, it's [Element?😳] going to get squeezed from a little bit from both the directions as well."

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According to the latest Pitchbook data, venture creation in biotech hit its slowest quarterly pace in eight years during 1Q 2024. With just over 60 new biotechs raising their first round of financing, the sector’s company formation activity has slowed 50-60% from its historic peak in 2021. Thank you Bruce Booth for penning your views on why this is a good thing. -Contraction in venture creation IS a healthy dynamic for the sector. -We need to ensure that the best ideas are getting advanced by the sector. -Greater discipline should translate into better returns in the long term for LPs and GPs/ VC #Venturecapital #Startups

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Looking to make a move into biotech VC? Here's the story of how a PhD w/2 postdocs pursued their dream job 👇🏻 "My path started with a PhD and two postdocs before breaking in, however all the time I was thinking about and working towards a position in VC. During that time, I was networking, internshipping /consulting part-time for VC firms and building a strategy to increase my odds, however I never knew if or when it would happen. Essentially, I had to have a day job I enjoyed and a career path for my life that didn’t involve being a VC. My advice for someone early in their professional career: Make the career choices that make you most fulfilled and VC will happen when it happens. Pick the day job you enjoy the most as you move forward to VC and keep in mind what can feel like the most direct path may not be (don’t pick a job you know you won’t like, just because you think it is direct). As for med school or consulting? Pick the path that will bring the most fulfillment for this portion of your life. A majority of Boston Biotech VC s (even the most junior roles) has a PhD and/or MD and some have an additional MBA. I would build a solid scientific foundation and there is no way to short cut that experience. It could start with a PhD, MD or 5-10 years in the industry (biotech, pharma, life science consulting), but almost every one of my colleagues has this solid foundation. Essentially, everyone had a successful science day job for about a decade before they became a VC and most had even more. In the meantime, talk to 20 other biotech VC, network, be tenacious and start to fill your VC tool kits with orthogonal experiences."

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In biotech, we all start with the same goal—pushing boundaries, making discoveries. But too often, I've seen brilliant teams bogged down by building custom triggers, webhooks, python scripts—just to get data flowing smoothly. This is especially true for sample centric workflows in LIMS. You are not just managing experiments; you're also managing infrastructure. And sometimes, it’s for something as simple as a Slack notification when a sample gets processed. Your heart’s in the science, in that next big breakthrough. So why spend precious time on setting up and maintaining orchestration for every little alert? That’s where Scispot’s alt-LIMS and our Zapier partnership come in. With a few clicks, you’ve got your notifications and triggers set up to work with over 6000+ apps. This is made possible using Scispot's Labsheets - connected data dictionary for your samples and experiments. One lab recently set-up their complete sample chain of custody in Scispot. Post that, they configured Slack notification for all the QC steps throughout their sample journey. If you are building something custom around notifications and triggers for your sample workload, feel free to reach out! https://lnkd.in/gcQ38ZUr

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We're moving from an age of scientific discovery to an age of scientific engineering. And software is playing a defining role. I got a glimpse at the future of genetic engineering and our incredible ability to program life thanks to Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm. Can you believe CRISPR is already 12 years old?! We've come such a long way since and its time to check-in on the cutting edge. My three key takeaways from chatting to Ben of what's to come: 1. Humans will defeat death 2. All drugs will be created in software 3. Genetic engineering is inescapable Curious? I unpack each of those in my write up: https://lnkd.in/gzK-Hui9?

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(so more simply, the development of increasing sensitivity (neural) results in hypersentivity to factors which alter (particularly stimulate) neural firing - of note blood glucose + glutamate excitotoxicity - where excitotoxin can be physical (in foodstuff) or informational (too much information)). That is that learned sensitivity results in forced aversion to the Diabesity set. It makes sense, in the sense that we know which foods or aspects of lifestyle are killing us - and it should not be rational to participate in any of these - where human beings are supposed to be rational. So - what's the link between neural sensitivity (first part of the comment) and rationality? Develop an understanding of line between right and wrong -> Acquire Morality -> Eventually acquire Wisdom -> Enforced Rational state and adapted towards learning (development of Mind, Brain - increasing sensitivity to information) -> Aversion to foods which over-stimulate (and information which over-stimulates ... ... the need to turn reclusive because of the pain of living in an environment characterised by insensitvity). https://lnkd.in/e3N8NHh4

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The Silent Tutors: How LLMs Are Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Cell Therapy Manufacturing

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Congrats to clock.bio for their $5.3m seed funding announced yesterday! Clock.bio managed to get this funding due to the incredible science and leadership team that they have onboarded in the company with Markus Gstöttner as CEO, Rodrigo Santos as CTO, and also Cambridge-based bit.bio's CEO Mark Kotter as co-founder. The $5.3m came from: - LocalGlobe - BlueYard Capital - Onsight Ventures - and angel investor Dr. Jonathan Milner, the Founder of Abcam. The interesting part is clock.bio's science which aims to turn back the clock of stem cells and make them young again. In clock.bio's case, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs as they name them) have been modelled and forced to age and trigger consequently a self-rejuvenation mechanism. Fascinating enough, this enforcement makes hiPSCs to go through a process where they repair the cellular hallmarks that are related to aging and, then, turn young and healthy. With lots of CRISPR work involved, the lads at clock.bio cracked the code and managed to identify more than 100 genes innate in human stem cells related to aging and longevity that all combined create something that clock.bio named as: "Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors" The company is based on the Milner Therapeutics Institute and I suppose they will start thinking after slow expansion to move to another place to spearhead their R&D efforts. Of course the heavy stem cell associated work and experience behind bit.bio's success has helped immensely to accelerate and bring to life clock.bio's Atlas of Rejuvenation. Maybe I am wrong, but even the name gives it away (bit.bio - clock.bio...) As the longevity biotech-niche industry is having a moment the last couple of years, this presents clock.bio with a good opportunity to use their technology and platform to bring radical therapies and overall health improvement in those receiving their future therapeutic interventions.

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Where I see disruption coming from: 1. Alternative manufacturing platforms The current methods are just too expensive. Doses can't keep costing millions of dollars. I anticipate the future of production being a combination of: - Much higher cell densities - Completely different cell lines - Fully synthetic processes (Maybe even plant-based production?) 2. Automation + AI Currently, manufacturing consistency is low. And our multi-faceted understanding of WHY is even lower. - Automation get's the process consistent at scale - AI analyzes the generated data to learn how it can improve - Updated instructions are passed back to the automated system That feedback loop will generate incredible, compounded rates of return. 3. New gene delivery modalities This is already happening. New viral vectors are getting developed. And non-viral methods are starting to impress. And if the manufacturing processes can avoid expensive GMP processes of the past? Even better. BONUS: In vivo cell programming This relates a bit more to the cell therapy side. Normally, manufacturing requires a lot of logistics. In vivo cell programming turns the patient into the bioreactor for their own therapy. Efficient, localized, and potent. Watch this one in particular. Any thoughts on what's next? Drop them in the comments.

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Normally, If I saw absolutely no scientists working in the Aanika Biosciences, Inc. lab I'd panic. But the reason the lab is empty right now is because i've had to turn them all into a sales team. We built our technology, got regulatory approvals, created an incredibly defensible go-to-market and now we're shipping! Not only is the team working to launch our solutions with existing customers, but to handle the influx of inquires from potential customers who see that working with Aanika can: -Help them differentiate their products from their competitors -Accelerate sales by reducing the risk of adopting their technologies -Help them tap into a totally new revenue stream via our platform We ARE hiring sales folks, so the scientists can go back to innovating and vetting technologies, but in the meantime it's great to see talented, problem-solving scientists get on the front lines and talk about the tech they built. #sales #sales #sales

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As most scientists know, biology is v undersampled. See here for our most recent thoughts & analysis of how this shows up in protein space: https://lnkd.in/gsbgMT8e We're ramping up computational/SWE work Arcadia Science to confront this big challenge in bio. 2 on-site roles open (team lead, full stack eng). Having sense of urgency & vision a must: https://lnkd.in/ggN6sBxU https://lnkd.in/gc-nv7DV

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No discussion today in the Illumina earning calls on GRAIL financials but they're in the Illumina press release: another giant loss: -$2B. No surprises there I guess but what I think is interesting is revenue: last 3 quarters are $30M, $27M, $29M. So the company burns $180M a quarter to generate $30M in sales and no growth. Super interested to hear the Q&A on their first earnings call next week...market cap is about $450M, about half the $1B or so they have in the bank...

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Grant revenue is not revenue. I'm all for non-dilutive funding, if and only if the SBIR/STTR-funded project accelerates your strategy with development of a product that will be sold (so science fair projects). However... *grant revenue is not validation dollars on the top line.* What you have shown is an ability to write grants, the basis for the research that led to the startup (in the case of academic spin-outs) in the first place. What you have not shown is 💸 the desire for customers to purchase your product(s) ➡ an ability to articulate a go-to-market plan, or 🔐 a down in the trenches understanding of product-market fit. Startups are a game of the quick and dead -- take the time and money you would spend writing these grants early in the life of your company and hit the road, listen to your customers, learn where and how your products fit, and start selling. Your P&L shows me your real progress there -- As an investor and advisor, I would rather see $10,000 in revenue from sales from a handful of customers in 2 quarters than a X% chance you get a $1M grant in 9 months.

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Wow, I think we're really witnessing the Apple-ification of Illumina 👏👏👏 Jacob has really been focusing his messaging on offering customers a full NGS vertical and this new MiSeq seems to embody that vision very well. There's virtually no mention of $/Gb in the announcement (folks are scrambling to try and decode that) - tag line is "Fastest, simplest. For every lab." Steve Jobs famously envisioned the Macintosh as an "appliance" - a computer for everyone vs its predecessor Apple 2 which was a computer for hobbyists (we're now called geeks). This MiSeq evolution follows that Apple evolution pretty well. Obviously not a consumer product, but MiSeq has been radically improved in terms of ease of use that may create some elasticity in this stale market: - Room temperature simple-to-load cartridge: 3 steps/20 minutes. - Much faster run times (4X faster than old MiSeq) - Seamless integration of DRAGEN (local) and BaseSpace (cloud) Technically there's a radical technology change underling the new instrument: its hardware is based not on the old MiSeq design, but on the flowcell-on-CMOS design of the iSeq. That means that (I think, not an engineer 🤣 oh wait am an engineer 🤣) ALL the optics and ALL the fluidics are in the consumable. This flips the economics of the old MiSeq on it's head as the instrument becomes super cheap - it's just a box with a computer and a display - and the consumable gets more complex as it contains the CMOS imager chip that gets thrown out each run. BUT the utilization of MiSeq has never been that high - sits in the corner a lot - so maybe this is fine 🤔 Two misses in my opinion: - No sign yet of any simplification of the product line. Do we need MiniSeq and the iSeq 100? Can't the new instrument replace both of these plus the old Miseq?! Maybe one low cost/high margin instrument platform with a range of consumables of varying capacity? - WTF with the nightmare new name that I've avoided saying up until this point 🤯🤯🤯 MiSeq i100 🤯🤯🤯 You took too old names MiSeq and iSeq 100 and jammed them together and kept the iSeq 100 in the product line?! Why not call this something new and simple like, I dunno, Macintosh 🤣, and position it as replacing the old MiSeq, MiniSeq, and iSeq 100. This would distinguish the new instrument from the MiSeq which will have to be around forever for the DX version. Grrrr. Anyway, if a dumb name is the worst thing here, that's a big win for Illumina, congrats to all involved. Nice first major product launch under Jacob that delivers on differentiating beyond price. Could have made a bigger splash compltely reimagining the product line - but maybe he's more Tim Cook than Steve Jobs - ain't nothing wrong with that! 👏👏👏

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“What is an engineering way to de-risk the possibility of reaching that type of prototype in the shortest amount of time possible?” I love the way Meliora Therapeutics CEO, David Li, thinks about this stuff, and Part 3 of my conversation with him for The Biotech Startups Podcast is an incredible deep dive into the combination of engineering, finance, and life sciences principles that are critical for bringing paradigm-shifting biotech solutions to market: – De-risking the “rifle shot” of biotech development, learning new business cadences, and learning to balance caution and urgency – Leveraging existing infrastructure, iterate quickly, and finding ways to run parallel experiments to accelerate prototypes and pre-clinical testing – Learning how to “make a call” when there’s endless experiments you could run… and a lack of concrete benchmarks for what an endpoint looks like – Rewiring beliefs around raising capital as a biotech vs software startup, and the critical importance of building (and flexing) your storytelling muscles, so you can do all of the above effectively It’s another don’t-miss episode, packed with multi-disciplinary learnings that traditionally, just don’t get enough airtime in biotech. Apple Podcasts & Spotify links in the comments below! 👇🏽 #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

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As AI shifts the focus in biotech from discovery to design, value will move up the stack. Companies leveraging AI in R&D will produce more safe, durable, and effective molecules over time. If you believe in this future, AI will make every chemist and wet lab biologist significantly more effective and efficient, and differentiation at the frontier will come from superior skills in clinical indication selection and clinical trial design.

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In 2019 the Gut X Axis strategy by resbiotic was birthed. Today, the microbiome consumer health sector has embraced this NPD strategy leveraging biotic + other ingredients to make beyond gut health-only formulations. Earlier this year, I posted about this trend https://lnkd.in/g2JwkBFq Currently, one of the hottest trends is Gut x Metabolic Health Axis, particularly products highlighting GLP-1 benefits. Resbiotic is one of the pioneering companies designing research-backed formulations showing GLP-1 boosting benefits. Their initial preclinical study shows prebeet ENERGY+ increasing GLP-1 by 400%.*. And...being recognized by HealthXWire as the Best All Natural Energy and Circulatory Supplement of 2024. Congrats C. Vivek Lal, MD, FAAP, Brittany Zenner, Stefany N. & entire Resbiotic team! https://lnkd.in/gvQ5yeBv

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Savor is promising a potential abiotic lipid production directly from CO2 + chemical processing, thus cutting out any living organism from the value chain. This is a fascinating GTM for such a product. It would cost way way too much to make diesel this way just to then waste 70% of that energy as heat in a combustion engine. The energy content in a pound of butter is very similar to diesel fuel but Artisanal butter can be sold for $10 a pound ($71/gallon) which is probably the initial price target for something like this. If this can make a variety of edible fats at volume efficiently and at a competitive cost then this could be very valuable for food production. https://lnkd.in/g5P8Y5XH

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