On November 4, do join @GENbio for the annual 'The State of AI in Drug Discovery' virtual summit! A preview below. Thanks to our sponsors: @RevvitySignals @AAlphaBio @labvantage @benchling events.zoom.us/ev/AhU-gkQDgA…

Mark Your Calendar! Advancing AAV Development: From Production to Performance Register for this FREE learning lab sponsored by @TakaraBioUSA: hubs.li/Q04yZYlC0

BREAKING: Nobel laureate David Baker’s team just published TWO Nature papers in one day! AI-designed proteases from scratch: 🧬 Cysteine proteases: 19% success rate, functional in mammalian cells. 🧬 Metalloproteases: 36% success rate, with over 10 BILLION-fold catalytic acceleration vs. the uncatalyzed reaction. From predicting protein structures to designing catalytic function. 📄 Nature papers: nature.com/articles/s41586-0… nature.com/articles/s41586-0…

Add synthetic biology approaches to control agricultural crop pests and human disease vectors, prevent the transmission of deadly pathogens, and protect public health and food security to the list as well.

Announcing THE STATE OF AI IN DRUG DISCOVERY virtual summit @GENbio : Wednesday, November 4; 11am ET/8 am PT. Guests: Marc Tessier-Lavigne, @SGRodriques, @AndrewLBeam, @lecong, Aliza Apple, @peytongreenside, @JoshuaMeier, @ElliotHershberg. Free reg: events.zoom.us/ev/AhU-gkQDgA…

As BPI comes to an end, so does our time with Editor in Chief @JohnSterling4. GEN is celebrating John’s many years of covering BPI and the remarkable career he has built along the way.

In light of the progress in mathematics, we at Edison Scientific and FutureHouse have assembled a set of Millennium Problems for Biology. They are chosen to be very hard to solve but very easy to validate in a simple laboratory environment. Any of these, if solved, would mark a major advance in biotechnology, and most of them would contribute materially towards curing disease. These are, in some sense, the “last reasonable eval” for AI in biology. This was work primarily by @MichaelaThinks and myself, with contributions from many others. Short descriptions below. The full descriptions of the problems with acceptance criteria are at the Bio Millennium Problems website, linked in the next post. Share more if you have ideas. If they meet our criteria, we’ll add them to our list (with attribution and permission).

Biotech's best year and its hardest year, at the same time. GEN's State of Biotech-Maraganore, Orkin, Google Cloud, Biotech Hangout. Sept. 23 | Virtual Free registration: hubs.li/Q04xP8M60 #stateofbiotech2026 #biotech #sicklecell #biotechhnangout #googlecloud #breakthrough

Davies “delivers a captivating history of the century-long effort to understand and treat #sicklecell… skillfully translates complex genetics into accessible prose... an illuminating account of scientific progress and medical inequity.” @PublishersWkly publishersweekly.com/9780674…

Many thanks to @AdrianWoolfson for his review in @ScienceMagazine -- the first full review of "Curved Air". The book is already shipping in the US hup.harvard.edu/books/978067… ... while the UK launch is now early October. @Harvard_Press @AevitasCreative

SAVE THE DATE: The biotech industry is evolving fast. Join GEN's flagship virtual event, The State of Biotech, for expert perspectives on AI, gene editing, drug development, biotech investment, and what's next. 📅 Sept. 23, 2026 ⏰ 11 AM EDT 🎟️ Free hubs.li/Q04rRwJn0

Nobel laureate Drew Weissman offers a sneak peek at next week's "RNA Therapeutics" virtual Spotlight @GENbio : July 29; Noon ET/9 am PT. Free registration. events.zoom.us/ev/AlfBx9dDQd…

RNA is becoming the universal software of precision medicine. The GEN Spotlight: RNA Therapeutics is coming July 29—free to attend! Featuring Nobel laureate Drew Weissman, @silvirouskin (@Harvard), and AIRFoundry's @zgives. Register: hubs.li/Q04mPn670 #RNATherapeutics

.@CNBC anchor Becky Quick is our exclusive guest in next week's "State of Precision Medicine" virtual summit. Hosted by EIC Damian Doherty @Inside_PM. Wednesday June 3rd: 11 am ET. Registration is free! events.zoom.us/ev/AmjmOfKUEk…

Accelerate cancer immunotherapy: Discover how experts moved from sequence to patient in under 12 months. Join our free GEN webinar on June 4. Register now: hubs.li/Q04gglbW0 @AsimovBio #CancerImmunotherapy #Sequencing #Biotech #Webinar

We live in a golden age of biology. So why are people still dying from disease? Because discovery and development move slower than they should. Today, we’re partnering with Incyte to change that. Kosmos is now the first agent that can compress months of drug development into weeks, from the earliest stages of scientific discovery through to FDA approval. @Incyte will be the first company to deploy it across their pipeline. Work that used to take a team of scientists months now happens in weeks. Patients can't wait, and neither can we.

My student Phil just co-founded Blank Bio through @ycombinator , and they just raised a $7.2M seed round with a strategic collaboration with @PacBio @blankbio_ is building RNA foundation models for precision oncology, inspired by Orthrus (nature.com/articles/s41592-0…), our Nature Methods work showing that RNA models become much more powerful when trained with biological structure: splicing, evolution, and function. Clinical trials still rely on crude proxies of tumor biology to make billion-dollar decisions. RNA contains a much richer signal: disease state, regulation, progression, and treatment response. Excited to see Phil and the Blank Bio team translate biologically grounded foundation models into better trial design: smaller, smarter, and more likely to bring effective therapies to patients.

1May: What are the Top 10 Best Selling Gene Therapies based on sales last year? Check out my latest A-List for @GENbio: genengnews.com/topics/genome…

My last friendly encounter with the late Craig Venter, at @CHI_Healthtech @TriConference in 2023 (photo credit @calimagna). The slide shows photos of Venter and Collins bookending the inaugural @NatureGenet conference in DC in 1993, foreshadowing the Genome Wars.