Latest TechBio News (I)
MetaphysicalCells: A newsletter about Science, Technology and AI Drug Discovery
Welcome back to another free edition of MetaphysicalCells 🪐🛸
Below is a synthesis of key trends and insights from the latest TechBio updates for
Latest TechBio News (I): 🔹Bioptimus, 🔹Oxford Nanoimaging, 🔹Causaly, 🔹D-Wave and Japan Tobacco, 🔹Algorae, 🔹Brainomix, 🔹Inait, 🔹BioXcel, 🔹Molecular Devices, and 🔹Techcyte
💈 Bioptimus SAS
Bioptimus just released (March 27, 2025) H-Optimus-1, a foundation model for histology (Bioptimus launches H-optimus-1: a state-of-the-art foundation model for pathology). H-optimus-1 is a 1.1 billion parameter vision transformer trained with self-supervised learning on an extensive proprietary dataset. It consists of billions of histology images, sampled from over 1 million H&E-stained histology slides from more than 800,000 patients and from more than 50 organs digitized with 3 scanner types across more than 4,000 clinical centers. H-Optimus-1 was designed for biomarker discovery, patient stratification, and AI-assisted diagnostics. When H-optimus-1 was benchmarked on 13 downstream tasks encompassing 15 datasets at both the slide level and tile level (including the HEST benchmark, Jaume et al. 2025, that consists of predicting gene expression from histology images in nine different organs) performed really well 🔝.
Bioptimus (the youngest child of Owkin) is a startup developing a large-language model (LLM), in order to build the first universal AI foundation model for biology to fuel breakthrough discoveries and accelerate innovations in biomedicine and beyond. The French startup was launched last year with a seed funding of $35M, led by Sofinnova Partners, with Bpifrance Large Venture, and additional funding from top global technology VCs. The world-class team at Bioptimus is led by Professor Jean-Philippe Vert together with Eric Durand (SVP Data Science at Owkin), Rodolphe Jenatton, Felipe Llinares-López and David C. (Chief Solutions Officer at Owkin).
The Bioptimus team released H-optimus-0 on July 29, 2024. And on October 24, 2024, Bioptimus announced that its H-optimus-0 foundation model (trained on a vast dataset of over 500,000 pathology slides) was integrated into Proscia’s Concentriq Embeddings (Bioptimus and Proscia to accelerate AI innovation in drug development).
Proscia makes digital pathology software and AI applications for cancer diagnosis and is considered a leader 🎩 in digital and computational pathology solutions. Proscia’s Concentriq® digital pathology platform works with every leading WSI scanner on the market today and its open API centralizes all your pathology data in one place making it more accessible and driving insight into your routine practice. Finally, users can launch any AI application from the Concentriq platform and power computational pathology at every organization. The Concentriq Embeddings program relies on AI models to deliver numerical representations of whole-slide images, simplifying the process of feeding them into algorithms for computing cancer risk scores and image classifiers. Overall, this eliminates the steps of data migration, processing and image standardization in AI development.
On October 15, 2024, Wired named Bioptimus one of the hottest 🌶️ startups in Paris in 2024 and on January 14, 2025 Bioptimus hit $76M funding milestone and prepared to launch groundbreaking foundation model for biology.
💈 Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd
Oxford Nanoimaging (ONI) is a start-up company based in Oxford manufacturing super-resolution microscopes, and a leader in super-resolution microscopy. ONI launched on March 31, 2025 the ONI Application Kit™: LNP Profiler, the first and only verified solution within the SMLM and super-resolution space for particle analysis (ONI's LNP Profiler Kit With AutoLNP: Revolutionizing Lipid Nanoparticle Characterization With Super-Resolution Microscopy). The kit includes a fully integrated platform for quantitative particle research, with optimized reagents, precision imaging hardware, and advanced software (ML software AutoLNP) to deliver a rapid, high-resolution, all-in-one workflow for LNP characterization with nanoscale precision. Basically its the only ML-powered lipid nanoparticle profiler kit to automate single-particle analysis of LNPs, using super-resolution microscopy and software to quantify size, payload, and ligand distribution.
On January 8, 2025, ONI Launched Aplo Scope to Revolutionize Single Molecule Super-Resolution Microscopy that enables scientists to observe and measure molecular interactions within cells and tissues with unparalleled precision. Contrary to traditional imaging methods that often struggle to capture nanoscale structures and the molecular interactions needed to fully understand drug efficacy and biomarker dynamics, ONI’s Aplo Scope is a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that delivers unparalleled clarity and precision for researchers.
ONI is a private, venture backed life sciences tools company with accessible, high-performance super-resolution microscopy and funded by ARCH Venture Partners, Casdin Capital, Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and many more. The company’s first 1️⃣ product, the Nanoimager, introduced the world’s first desktop platform for single-molecule imaging, offering 20 nm resolution to study individual molecules in living cells, tissue, and nanoparticles.
💠 ProtComposer gives researchers more control over how proteins are shaped in 3D by using ellipsoids to guide design—letting AI generate complex, modular protein structures that align more closely with natural biology and even editable by layout (ProtComposer: Compositional Protein Structure Generation with 3D Ellipsoids).
🔹Hand-specifying ellipsoids enable users to control the location, size, orientation, secondary structure, and approximate shape of protein substructures. Conditioning on ellipsoids of existing proteins enables redesigning their substructure's connectivity or editing substructure properties.
🔹By conditioning on novel and diverse ellipsoid layouts from a simple statistical model, they improve protein generation with expanded Pareto frontiers between designability, novelty, and diversity. Further, this enables sampling of designable proteins with a helix-fraction that matches PDB proteins, unlike existing generative models that commonly oversample conceptually simple helix bundles.
💈 D-Wave Inc and Japan Tobacco Inc
On March 31, 2025, D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS), a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services, and the pharmaceutical division of Japan Tobacco announced the completion of a joint proof-of-concept project that used quantum computing technology and AI in the drug discovery process. JT and D-Wave enhanced large language models (LLMs) with a quantum-hybrid workflow to increase their generative capabilities and enable JT to produce novel, more “drug-like” molecular structures beyond those found in the training datasets for the quantum-hybrid generative AI system (D-Wave and Japan Tobacco Validate Quantum and AI Workflow Towards Generative Drug Discovery).
🔺 The work demonstrated that LLM hybrid models that used classical computation together with D-Wave’s quantum processing unit (QPU) resulted in more valid generated molecules when compared to classical methods alone.
🔺 In addition, the molecules generated by QPU-assisted LLM training showed a higher quantitative estimate of drug-likeness compared to the training dataset and the models trained with classical computation-driven LLM training methods.
The two JT and D-Wave started their collaboration back on October 1, 2024 (D-Wave And Japan Tobacco Collaborated On Quantum AI-Driven Drug Discovery To Accelerate Pharmaceutical Innovation) when D-Wave and JT’s pharmaceutical division announced a joint proof-of-concept project to use quantum computing and AI for drug discovery, specifically in the “Quantum AI-driven Drug Discovery” process. Supported by D-Wave's team of professional services experts, the AI team in JT’s pharmaceutical division planned to utilize D-Wave's annealing quantum computing solutions as accelerators in the speed and quality of training JT’s novel AI-driven analysis systems, aiming to extend the applicable range of such AI systems in the AI-driven Drug Design.
D-Wave Quantum Inc is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software and services, and is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers—and the only company building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. D-Wave’s technology has been used by some of the world’s most advanced organizations including Mastercard, Deloitte, Davidson Technologies, ArcelorMittal, Siemens Healthineers, Unisys, NEC Corporation, Pattison Food Group Ltd., DENSO, Lockheed Martin, Forschungszentrum Jülich, University of Southern California, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
💈 Causaly Inc
On March 31, 2025, Causaly announced new 🆕 scientific AI agents that provide research teams with the industry's most comprehensive biomedical knowledge for drug discovery (Causaly Announces Agentic AI for Scientific Discovery). With agentic AI in Causaly Discover, life sciences teams can access, analyze, and synthesize information across the Causaly Knowledge Graph and internal and external data sources and researchers can tap into the broadest and deepest ecosystem of biomedical information to answer their research questions with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and transparency.
Causaly by using a hybrid approach that combines a best-in-class knowledge graph with the latest advances in generative AI, enables researchers to conduct deep, unbiased scientific exploration from target identification to biomarker discovery during drug development. Basically Causaly (London UK, 2017) offers a semantic AI-platform which reads collections of scientific articles and extracts causal associations through linguistic and statistical models.
🔺 Every month something like 100,000 biomedical articles are added to the over 30+ million already published, which makes it almost impossible (apart, time-consuming and inefficient) to try to decipher key relationships and find emerging discoveries in the vast data ocean of biomedical research.
🔺 The search engine for these biomedical articles is PubMed that provides access to MEDLINE, the database that contains bibliographic information on more than 30 million articles (more than 122,305,477,309 bytes, thus requiring 122.3 GB disk space, 16.9 GB compressed as of 2016) in approximately 30,000 records (28100 peer-reviewed journals in English language and 6450 in other languages as of 2014, link), including full text for some 4 million of these articles.
🔺 On an average working day, approximately 2.5 million users from around the world access PubMed to perform something like 3 million searches and 9 million page views per day.
🔺 So, while it would be impossible for a human being to read the entire volume of articles published so far, Causaly’s AI reads the entire volume of biomedical literature ever published in seconds.
In July 2023, the London startup Causaly raised $60M, a Series B that will be going toward R&D and to continue building out its team (Causaly, an AI platform for drug discovery and biomedical research, raises $60M). Yiannis Kiachopoulos, the CEO who co-founded the company with CTO Artur Saudabayev, said that Causaly has already worked with 12 of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and some of the biggest names in medical research.
💈 Algorae Pharmaceuticals Limited (1AI, formerly Living Cell Technologies Limited)
Algorae Pharmaceuticals just received a significant R&D Tax Incentive rebate of A$451,359 from the Australian Taxation Office for eligible activities conducted over the 2023 and 2024 financial years. This non-dilutive cash injection will be used to advance the company’s AI-driven drug discovery programs and pharmaceutical development pipeline, supporting early revenue opportunities (Algorae Pharmaceuticals Secures A$451,359 R&D Rebate to Boost AI-Driven Drug Development).
AlgoraeOS or Algorae Operating System is Algorae’s closed-loop platform, to evaluate drugs and molecules for repositioning and combining into novel drug candidates aimed at patient cohorts experiencing significant unmet medical need. Algorae is currently working on:
🔹AI-116 is a novel combination drug candidate made up of cannabidiol, CBD and an off-patent pharmaceutical ingredient, a potential treatment for dementia 🧠, including Alzheimer’s disease (Phase 2).
🔹AI-168 is a novel combination drug candidate made up of a cannabinoid and an off-patent pharmaceutical ingredient, a potential treatment for cardiovascular disease 🫀, including hypertension. Algorae announced in November 2024 that its cardiovascular drug candidate AI-168 demonstrated strong cardio protective qualities (in preclinical studies), outperforming existing first line FDA-approved beta blockers in cardiovascular preclinical studies.
🔹NTCELL is an alginate coated capsule product containing clusters of neonatal porcine choroid plexus cells that are injected into the damaged site within the brain 🧠 to target the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (Phase 2).
🔹Moreover, Algorae decided to evaluate in preclinical studies 24 🆕 drug targets predicted by the AlgoraeOS platform (for oncology medical indications). The new drug targets were generated by Version 1 of Algorae Operating System developed in conjunction with UNSW AI Institute, with grant funding support from CSIRO.
Regarding its operating system, Algorae Pharmaceuticals (ASX: 1AI) launched on September 25, 2024 the Version 1.0 of its biopharmaceutical platform AlgoraeOS after development 🚧 at the University of New South Wales. The AlgoraeOS platform aggregates medical and scientific data on over 5,000 known drugs and molecules in over 150 human cell types. The platform uses AI systems to predict fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs that the company says it will either take to clinical trials itself or do so in collaboration with partners, potentially big pharma (Algorae Pharmaceuticals launched AI-powered platform to generate novel drug candidates). The development of Version 2 of AlgoraeOS is underway to expand pharmaceutical databases, enhance AI models and increase predictive capacity in additional fields of medicine.
⚙️ An open science challenge is putting ML drug discovery tools to the test—as part of the Target 2035 initiative, the Structural Genomics Consortium and partners launched a DREAM Challenge inviting researchers to predict active compounds from DNA-encoded library data.
💈 Brainomix Ltd
On March 20, 2025, Brainomix announced the completion of a £14M ($18M) Series C investment round (Brainomix Completes £14M ($18M) Series C Round to Advance Its Transformative AI Imaging Technology in Healthcare). The round was co-led by prominent healthtech investors that include existing investors, Parkwalk Advisors, the UK's largest growth EIS fund manager, and the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF), along with new investor Hostplus via the IP Group Hostplus Innovation Fund. Hostplus is a leading Australian industry superannuation (pension) fund with over AUD$120 billion in funds under management. The round was supported by LifeSci Capital.
Brainomix, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, UK in 2010, is an AI-powered MedTech solutions company that has pioneered the development of an AI platform that automates validated imaging biomarkers to improve both diagnosis and treatment decisions. For example, the 📍e-Stroke platform (e-Aspects, e-CTA and e-CTP) is the world's most comprehensive stroke imaging solution, and the 📍e-ILD technology is an automated AI software which has been trained to process high resolution chest CT data in patients with interstitial lung diseases, that cause progressive pulmonary fibrosis. On March 21, 2023, Brainomix announced that its 360 e-ASPECTS tool for assessing stroke signs on plain CT brain scans has received FDA clearance, enabling the company to deploy its cutting-edge AI imaging platform to stroke centers in the USA.
Brainomix is also offering a 📍Cancer solution that has been trained to characterize and quantify solid-tumors using thousands of cases from leading academic institutions, unlocking objective measurements of tumor lengths and other biomarkers such as tumor volume.
Moreover, Brainomix and Bridge Biotherapeutics, Inc—a clinical-stage biotechnology company in the Republic of Korea focused on developing novel drugs for cancer, fibrosis and inflammation—announced a new partnership in 2022 to deliver a quantitative imaging biomarker analysis within a phase 2 study. Under this partnership, Brainomix will leverage its e-ILD technology—automated AI software—which has been trained to process high resolution chest CT data in patients with interstitial lung diseases that cause progressive pulmonary fibrosis.
Finally, Brainomix has also a collaboration with the French medical neurology imaging company Pixyl for distributing Pixyl’s SaaS solution Neuro.MS for the diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). In particular, Pixyl.Neuro is a cutting-edge medical technology that harnesses the power of advanced AI to detect anomalies and changes in brain MR images for neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders:
🔺 Pixyl.Neuro.MS automatically analyzes MRI images and provides structured report on multiple sclerosis, and
🔺 Pixyl.Neuro.BV provides detailed information on brain anatomy quantification used for many pathologies, including: dementias, psychiatric disorders and multiple sclerosis.
🚨 Last month (March 11, 2025) Pixyl was acquired by Gleamer.
💈 inait AI
inait in Switzerland announced in March 2025 a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate the development and commercialization of inait’s innovative AI technology, using its unique digital brain AI platform (inait Announced Collaboration with Microsoft to Deploy Novel AI Based on Digital Brains Across Industries).
inait’s AI technology, born from decades of neuroscience research offers a paradigm shift in AI with its “brain programming language” and ability to learn from experience and understand cause and effect delivers cognitive abilities for real world interactions towards adaptive general intelligence, overcoming the limitations of current AI systems.
Launched in 2018 and backed by $300M, inait has operated in deep tech stealth mode 🥷 to decipher the neural code, develop a digital brain operating system, and pioneer causal learning to empower digital brains to accumulate cognitive skills. Now, after surpassing rigorous technology and product benchmarks and forging strategic partnerships, inait is launching Intelligent Action Models across industry verticals, starting with fintech and robotics.
💈 BioXcel Therapeutics Inc
BioXcel Therapeutics (BTI) released on March 28, 2025 its annual 10-K report (BioXcel Therapeutics, Inc. SEC 10-K Report), and some of the highlights are the following:
🔹Product Revenue, Net: $2.266M, reflecting an increase of 64% over the previous year, indicating growing market acceptance and interest in IGALMI®.
🔹Product Development - Neuroscience: The company's most advanced neuroscience candidate is BXCL501, an investigational, proprietary, orally dissolving film formulation of dexmedetomidine, being developed for the treatment of agitation associated with psychiatric and neurological disorders, with a focus on at-home settings for bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and dementia due to probable Alzheimer’s disease.
🔹Product Development - Immuno-Oncology: BXCL701 is the company's most advanced immuno-oncology candidate, being developed as an oral innate immune activator for aggressive forms of prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and other tumors.
🔹Clinical Trials - SERENITY At-Home: The company initiated the SERENITY At-Home trial to evaluate the safety of a 120 mcg dose of BXCL501 for acute treatment of agitation associated with bipolar disorders or schizophrenia in the at-home setting. As of March 27, 2025, 127 patients had been enrolled, with topline data expected in the second half of 2025.
🔹Clinical Trials - TRANQUILITY Program: The TRANQUILITY II trial showed positive results for BXCL501 in treating agitation associated with Alzheimer’s-related dementia. The company plans to generate additional Phase 3 efficacy and safety data in care-facility settings.
BioXcel Therapeutics in the US was spun out of BioXcel Corporation in March 2017 to leverage AI and ML for drug re-innovation, and now utilizes AI to find applications for existing approved drugs or clinically validated candidates in immuno-oncology, neuroscience and rare diseases. BioXcel’s leading product is IGALMI™, a sublingual film used to treat agitation associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It was approved in April 2022 and is currently on the market. Since BioXcel Therapeutics aims to become the leading AI-enabled neuroscience company, it entered a $260M long-term financing agreement with Oaktree Capital Management and Qatar Investment Authority to accelerate growth and to commercially launch IGALMI™, in return for a share of the profits.
⚙️ Should Investors Buy These 2 Beaten-Down Artificial Intelligence (AI) Healthcare Stocks?
Two AI healthcare stocks ▶️ Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXRX) and ▶️ Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC) have lagged the market over the past year. But if these companies' ambitions (AI-related and otherwise) materialize over the long run, they could deliver market-beating returns. Are the stocks worth investing in?
💈 Molecular Devices
Molecular Devices is developing AI and automated solutions for organoids, enabling more accurate disease modeling and drug testing (Growing Interest in Organoids: AI & Automated Solutions by Molecular Devices). The Global Human Organoid Market is currently experiencing rapid expansion 📈, propelled by groundbreaking advancements in stem cell science and the rise of organoids represents a key shift in moving away from animal models, offering a more relevant and ethical option for disease modeling and drug discovery.
Molecular Devices, is one of the leading providers of high-performance bioanalytical measurement solutions for life science research, pharmaceutical and biotherapeutic development, and introduced the CellXpress.ai™ an automated cell culture system for screening, that is a revolutionary ML-assisted solution that standardizes the entire cell culture journey. The CellXpress.ai™ is an AI-driven cell culture innovation hub that gives you total control over demanding cell culture feeding and passaging schedules—eliminating time in the lab while maintaining a 24/7 schedule for growing and scaling multiple stem cell lines, spheroids or organoids. Molecular Devices is also offering
👉 an AI-based software that provides Photoshop-like tools for image annotation, and
👉 the ImageXpress® Confocal HT.ai High-Content Imaging System, designed to help researchers advance phenotypic screening of 3D organoid models. The ImageXpress® utilizes a seven-channel laser light source with eight imaging channels to enable highly multiplexed assays while maintaining high throughput by using shortened exposure times. Water immersion objectives improve image resolution and minimize aberrations so scientists can see deeper into thick samples. Moreover, the combination of MetaXpress® software and IN Carta® software simplifies workflows for advanced phenotypic classification and 3D image analysis with ML capabilities and an intuitive user interface.
Molecular Devices has a collaboration with HeartBeatBio (HeartBeat.bio AG) in Austria that is developing a high-throughput human cardiac 🫀 organoids (Cardioids) screening platform for cardiac drug discovery, that enables modeling of diseases such as drug-induced and genetic cardiomyopathies as well as myocardial infarction and fibrosis (cardiotoxicity).
🪩 According to a report by The Insight Partners, the organoid market is expected to reach $15.01 billion in 2031, a CAGR of 22.1% over 2023’s $3.03 billion. 🚀
🪩 Check out this article from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News to learn from several R&D experts including Mary Duseau, President of Molecular Devices, HeartBeatBio’s trusted hardware partner, to get a sense of where the organoid market might be headed in the next few years.
🪩 Moreover, it was just announced the recent signing of a definitive agreement to acquire HUB Organoids B.V. by Merck KGaA, expanding Merck Life Science diverse portfolio and enhancing HUB´s current capabilities and outreach.
💈 Techcyte
Techcyte, founded in 2013, is transforming the practice of pathology with a unified pathology platform that digitizes lab workflows and offers AI tools that improve the efficiency and accuracy of diagnostic testing. The AI-driven digital pathology company, just launched (March 2025) Fusion, the first open, standards-based digital pathology platform that unifies anatomic and clinical workflows into one seamless, AI-powered system (Techcyte unveils Fusion, the first unified anatomic and clinical digital pathology platform).
Fusion integrates whole slide imaging, LIS, EHR, and AI into a single cloud-native platform that streamlines diagnostics, improves interoperability, and enhances patient care.
Designed as a cloud-native SaaS solution, Fusion is built on industry standards, including DICOM, FHIR, HL7, and DICOMWeb, ensuring seamless integration with the LIS, EHR, slide scanners, and image management systems such as VNAs. Its open architecture enables laboratories to incorporate third-party AI, alongside Techcyte’s proprietary AI, unlocking new diagnostic insights and enhancing workflow efficiency. Moreover, it addresses the problem that pathologists face with navigating multiple disconnected systems, fragmented data sources, and manual workflows, all of which slow down efficiency and decision-making. In fact, Fusion eliminates these inefficiencies by seamlessly integrating patient data, whole slide imaging, laboratory information systems (LIS), communication tools, and AI-powered diagnostics, enabling pathologists to make faster, more informed diagnoses.
Overall Fusion is redefining the future of digital pathology:
✅ For unified workflow,
✅ Standards-based (DICOM, HL7, FHIR),
✅ Embedded AI diagnostics, and
✅ Cloud-native, web-based SaaS platform.
More News 🗞️
🔸Cleveland Clinic and CAS to Leverage Quantum Computing and AI in Drug Discovery Effort
🔸Engine Biosciences and Experimenal Drug Development Centre Partner to Advance Novel Therapies to Combat Cancer
🔸Revvity Signals Software Unveils Unified Data Platform To Accelerate Drug Discovery
🔸Verge Genomics and Collaborators Identify Digital Clinical Biomarker Endpoints Sensitive to Short Term Disease Progression in the Pre-treatment Run-in Period of VRG5063
🔸Valted Seq Launches Revolutionary AI-Powered Genomics Tool to Accelerate Breakthroughs in Healthcare and Life Sciences
🔸Caris Life Sciences secures $168M for precision medicine platform
🔸Sail Biomedicines Appoints Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D., to Its Board of Directors
For more: Latest TechBio News (II).