Your Weekly TechBio News 📚🤓
Latest TechBio News
Ginkgo Bioworks launched 🛸Ginkgo Cloud Lab
Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) announced the official launch of Ginkgo Cloud Lab, a new interface that allows researchers to transition their benchwork to Ginkgo’s autonomous lab infrastructure directly through a web browser (Ginkgo Bioworks Launches Ginkgo Cloud Lab, Powered by Autonomous Lab Infrastructure).
💈Ginkgo Cloud Lab runs on the company’s proprietary Reconfigurable Automation Carts (RACs). These modular units combine high-precision robotic arms, maglev sample transport tracks, and industrial-grade software to create an endlessly flexible laboratory environment.
💈The Cloud Lab provides remote access to a fleet of over 7️⃣0️⃣ instruments spanning critical biological unit operations, including sample preparation, liquid handling, analytical readouts, storage, and incubation.
💈The core of the initial Cloud Lab launch is an AI-driven agent called EstiMate. For the first time, scientists can submit a protocol in human language and receive an immediate assessment of compatibility with Ginkgo’s current autonomous fleet and transparent pricing for running the protocol.
Epredia and Mindpeak Announced EU Distribution Agreement 🔗
Epredia, a global leader in precision cancer diagnostics and a subsidiary of PHC Holdings Corporation (TSE: 6523), and Mindpeak, a leading provider of AI solutions for clinical and research pathology, announced a distribution agreement to bring Mindpeak’s AI-based image recognition software to Epredia’s digital pathology customers in the European Union 🇪🇺 (Epredia and Mindpeak Announce EU Distribution Agreement for AI-Powered Image Recognition in Cancer Diagnostics).
💈Under the agreement, Epredia will offer Mindpeak’s AI software for clinical diagnostics, translational research, and pharmaceutical development.
💈In the future, Epredia also intends to explore integration of Mindpeak’s AI solutions into the Epredia E1000 Dx Digital Pathology Solution workflow, which would enable a seamless workflow and streamlined data exchange through Epredia’s image management system. The E1000 Dx consists of a high-speed, automated, whole-slide imaging digital scanner with medical grade viewer and advanced image management and viewer software that allows review of up to 1,500 high-resolution digital images daily.
Decoy Therapeutics and Quantori to build a Google Cloud-native peptide design platform ☁️
Decoy Therapeutics, Inc (Nasdaq: DCOY), a biotechnology company pioneering Designable Multi-Antivirals (D-MAVs™), a 🆕 category of antivirals engineered to work across multiple viruses, announced a collaboration with Quantori, a leading provider of digital transformation services and technology for the life sciences and healthcare industries, supported by funding from Google Cloud, to build a Google Cloud-native peptide design platform intended to dramatically increase the speed and scale of antiviral peptide discovery (Decoy Therapeutics Enters Strategic Partnership with Quantori to Deploy Google Cloud-native Integrated AI-Driven Peptide Design and Molecular Simulation Platform).
💈The collaboration will deliver a production-grade, cloud-based infrastructure built on Google Cloud Platform that integrates advanced protein folding models, molecular dynamics simulations and performance optimization tools into a single scalable environment.
💈The new platform is designed to integrate Cloud-native infrastructure, advanced ML and high-performance computing directly into Decoy's proprietary IMP³ACT™ design-build-test-learn engine.
💈By unifying these capabilities into a single production-grade computational environment, Decoy expects to increase computational throughput by approximately 25- to 100-fold, enabling a step-change improvement in how rapidly new peptide candidates can be conceived, optimized, and advanced. Additionally, the modularity of the platform will allow Decoy to continually adapt and upgrade its capabilities in the fluid competitive space of AI-driven molecular design.
Kvantify Advances Hybrid Quantum-Classical Software for Drug Discovery
Kvantify is participating in a new research collaboration aimed at improving the usability of quantum computing for drug discovery (Kvantify Advances Hybrid Quantum-Classical Software for Drug Discovery). Moreover, the Danish quantum software company Kvantify received new funding and research collaborations from Danish universities, following the launch of its Qrunch platform for computational chemistry at SC25 last fall.
💈The company is part of the ODAQS Project (Optimal Design Automation towards a Performant Quantum Software Stack) led by Aarhus University and supported by Innovation Fund Denmark. The initiative brings together researchers from Aarhus University and Aalborg University to develop software tools that simplify the process of designing and running quantum algorithms for pharmaceutical and chemical applications. A key component of the project focuses on applying advanced learning methods to automate and optimize the development of quantum software.
💈Kvantify completed the second close of a €7M funding round aimed at advancing its hybrid quantum-classical approach to molecular simulation. The financing follows earlier backing, including a $10.8M seed round announced in 2024, as well as prior support from the European Innovation Council’s Accelerator program and other early funding initiatives that helped the company develop several of its core products.
Singapore plans first biological datacentre 🧫💽🏭
DayOne, a Singapore-headquartered global datacentre provider, is teaming up with Melbourne-based biocomputing startup Cortical Labs (working on the DishBrain project, where researchers successfully taught a network of 800,000 in-vitro brain cells to play the classic arcade game Pong within five minutes) to build Singapore’s first biological datacentre (Neurons over silicon: Singapore plans first biological datacentre).
💈DayOne and Cortical Labs are bringing ‘wetware’ computing to the city-state, using living neurons grown from stem cells to support the demand for AI while addressing sustainability concerns. Supported by capital and strategic input from DayOne, the project will start off as a prototype at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine).
💈What differentiates Cortical Labs technology from traditional computing is its reliance on biological intelligence rather than neural networks. Because biological cells naturally strive to reduce unpredictability in their environments, they can learn and adapt with incredible efficiency. More importantly, they consume very little energy and generate almost no heat.
💈The prototype at NUS Medicine will comprise a single rack of 20 Cortical Cloud units.
💈Following the validation phase at NUS, the collaboration will transition into a live deployment environment inside a DayOne commercial datacentre in Singapore. The wetware systems will be tested under real-world workloads, tracking compatibility with standard power distribution, contained environmental management systems and cooling infrastructure. If successful, the partners are exploring a phased expansion that could see up to 1,000 units deployed.
Collaborations 🤝
Tempus AI expanded a multi-year collaboration with Merck
Tempus AI and Merck announced an expanded multi year collaboration focused on AI driven precision medicine and drug discovery in oncology and other therapeutic areas (Tempus AI Deepens Merck Collaboration As Pharma Demand And Losses Evolve).
✅ The partnership aims to combine Tempus AI’s large scale genomic and clinical data with Merck’s drug development capabilities to support biomarker discovery and clinical research.
✅ The agreement extends and broadens an existing relationship, positioning Tempus AI as a 🔐 data and AI partner for a major pharmaceutical company.
Lundbeck, Orion, Recursion, Servier, and Apheris
Lundbeck is joining the newly launched Federated ADMET Network alongside Apheris, Orion Pharma, Recursion, Servier, and other leading partners (Lundbeck is joining the newly launched Federated ADMET Network alongside Apheris, Orion Pharma, Recursion, Servier, and other leading partners). The ADMET Network was founded by Apheris and leading pharma members, including Lundbeck, Orion Pharma, Recursion, and Servier.
✅ The network addresses a structural limitation in ADMET modeling: Predictive performance is bounded by the chemical and assay diversity available within any single organization. When models are applied to novel scaffolds, performance typically drops. Yet the data required to improve generalization sits 🪑 siloed 🧱across the industry.
✅ The result is a set of models trained across a broader range of industrial chemistry and assay behavior than any single company could achieve alone. They are starting with a defined baseline set of endpoints, including aqueous solubility, lipophilicity, permeability, metabolic stability and intrinsic clearance, CYP inhibition, hERG liability, and tissue binding, among others.
The scope will expand as additional members join and new endpoints and modalities are added.
Biophytis and LynxKite Expand AI Partnership
Biophytis SA, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on age-related diseases, and LynxKite Technologies, a leader in advanced analytics and AI, have expanded their partnership to turbocharge AI-driven drug discovery for longevity therapeutics (Biophytis and LynxKite Expand AI Partnership for Longevity Drug Discovery).
✅ The collaboration will leverage LynxKite's computational platform and AI expertise to support Biophytis' drug development programs targeting sarcopenia, a degenerative muscle disease associated with aging, and dry age-related macular degeneration.
✅ The expanded partnership will focus on several key objectives, including modeling the Mas receptor for structure-based drug design using AI and protein prediction tools, designing and prioritizing synthetic drug candidates through AI-guided molecule generation and predictive filtering, synthesizing and testing promising MasR activators, and selecting and protecting lead candidates through patent filings. The collaboration will also involve developing and validating the AI software through feedback loops from in vitro and in vivo validation of candidates.
Ono Pharmaceutical expanded its collaboration with Congruence Therapeutics
Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd and Congruence Therapeutics announced that they have expanded their existing multi-target research partnership through the execution of a 🆕 research collaboration for 2️⃣ additional programs (Congruence and Ono Pharma Expand Multi-Target Research Partnership with the Addition of Two New Programs). The new collaboration continues to leverage Congruence’s computational drug discovery engine, Revenir™, which systematically captures the biophysical features of proteins in different functional states to enable a highly differentiated approach to small-molecule discovery.
✅ The expanded collaboration is focused on two clinically validated high-value targets in the areas of neurology and immunology for which Congruence will lead the effort to discover small molecule modulators and advance them to the development candidate stage.
✅ Ono will have the option to secure exclusive worldwide rights to further develop and commercialize development candidates generated under the new agreement.
✅ Congruence’s wholly owned program directed to MC4R-deficient genetic obesity is entering a Phase 1/1b clinical study this month. In the next few weeks, Congruence will also nominate development candidates for each of its programs directed to GBA1-driven Parkinson’s Disease and Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency.
Bruker and Noetik expanded their partnership
Bruker Spatial Biology, a division of Bruker Corporation (Nasdaq: BRKR) announced that it will expand its collaboration with Noetik Inc, following their prior study of more than 3500 patient samples with the CosMx® Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI). CosMx SMI powers Noetik's pre-training and scaling of bio-foundation models to perform complex genome-wide simulations of human cellular- and tissue-level biology to enable diverse therapeutics applications (Bruker Expands Collaboration with Noetik to Advance Tissue Foundational Models for Translational and Therapeutic Applications).
✅ This collaboration builds on Bruker’s best-in-class spatial biology portfolio, including CosMx SMI, AtoMx® SIP, CellScape™ XR, GeoMx® DSP and PaintScape™ platform, which together support high fidelity data generation for discovery and translational research.
✅ To develop self-supervised AI, Noetik leverages the CosMx SMI platform to generate the largest and most biologically complete single-cell and subcellular spatial transcriptomic and multiomic datasets in oncology.
Brainlab and Precision NeuroMed partnered
Brainlab SE, a digital medical technology company automating and optimizing clinical workflows using AI and sophisticated software algorithms, and Precision NeuroMed (PNM), a clinical-stage biotechnology company advancing precision therapeutics for central nervous system (CNS) diseases, announced a strategic partnership to develop and commercialize an AI-enabled treatment planning platform for convection enhanced delivery, or CED, to the brain 🧠 (Brainlab and Precision NeuroMed Announce Strategic Partnership to Standardize and Scale Precision Drug Delivery to the Brain).
💈CED overcomes long-standing limitations imposed by the blood-brain barrier and enables precise concentrations of large-molecule drugs while minimizing systemic exposure and off-target effects.
💈By combining Brainlab’s global experience in medical imaging digitalization, surgical workflow integration, and precision planning with PNM’s proprietary molecular flow simulation software, the companies intend to create a cloud-based CED Treatment Planning System (CED TPS). The platform will use advanced imaging, simulation modeling, and AI-driven optimization to better personalize drug distribution for each patient supporting improved precision, reproducibility, and clinical consistency.
The jointly developed CED TPS aims to integrate automated planning and simulation tools to help surgical teams design and review delivery plans personalized for each patient. The technology can make CED more standardized, scalable, and accessible across community treatment centers for patients suffering from debilitating neurological disorders with unmet needs.
Initial development of the CED TPS will focus on supporting PNM’s lead investigational drug, PNM-201, for recurrent glioblastoma, an aggressive and often fatal form of brain cancer with limited treatment options. The companies expect to expand the platform to enable delivery of additional drugs and gene therapies for a broad range of CNS disorders, including potential therapies for epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and ALS.
Liquid AI and Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine is partnering with Liquid AI to build lightweight scientific foundation models for pharmaceutical research. Their first model, LFM2-2.6B-MMAI (a 2️⃣.6️⃣B-parameter foundation model enabling tasks like molecular design, ADMET prediction, and retrosynthesis while keeping sensitive data on-premise), delivers:
💈9️⃣8️⃣.8️⃣% success in multi-parameter molecular optimization (MuMO-Instruct),
💈Strong affinity prediction across 2️⃣.5️⃣M compounds / 6️⃣8️⃣9️⃣ targets, and
💈Robust chemical reasoning and 1️⃣-step retrosynthesis.
💈By combining Liquid AI’s efficient LFM architecture with Insilico’s MMAI Gym (1,000+ pharmaceutical benchmarks), they demonstrated that small, private models can achieve cloud-scale scientific performance.
Money Talks 👛
Turbine raised $25M Series B
Turbine - a leading virtual biology company – raised a $25M Series B financing. The round was led by US-based Interactive Venture Partners, with participation from Beiersdorf and existing investors, including MSD Global Health Innovation, Accel and Mercia Asset Management PLC (Turbine Raises $25M for Virtual Experiments in Budapest).
🪀 By utilizing its foundational virtual cell model powered by its lab-in-the-loop, Turbine creates virtual copies of experimental assays.
🪀 With the new momentum from the investment round, Turbine will expand its oncology-focused offering in biopharma to include immunology through a newly announced collaboration with a top 10 pharma company.
🪀 Per the agreement, Turbine's virtual assays will be trained to model immune cell behavior using proprietary datasets provided by the partner. The companies aim to provide deep mechanistic insights into immune ⛑️ pathways to inform the identification and prioritization of novel therapeutic combinations.
Ten63 Therapeutics raised $45M
Ten63 Therapeutics, an advanced AI drug-discovery company, announced that it added strategic investment from 🆕 investors Chugai Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation, bringing the company's total funding to over $45M (Ten63 Therapeutics Closes Strategic Financing, Bringing Total Funding to More Than $45M to Scale the Next-Generation of Artificial Intelligent Drug Discovery).
🪀 The increased funding will fuel the advancement of Ten63's proprietary computational drug discovery platform, BEYOND, the world's first Large Quantum Chemistry Model (LQCM), delivering precise quantum-mechanics level simulations that are orders of magnitude faster than other cutting-edge computational approaches.
🪀 The company said that BEYOND enables the pursuit of previously undruggable targets, which correspond to 8️⃣0️⃣% of all proteins in the human body. Ten63 has multiple programs showing its platform can overcome previously intractable problems. One such program focuses on Myc. With the mathematical breakthroughs behind BEYOND, Ten63 has Myc-targeting therapeutics in active development that surpass all previous attempts at Myc inhibition.
Outpost Bio raised $3.5M pre-seed
Outpost Bio, a company focused on decoding complex interactions in human biology, has raised a $3.5M pre-seed round co-led by Merantix Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from OpenSeed VC, Defined, and several strategic family offices and angel investors (Outpost Bio raises $3.5M pre-seed for human microbiology models).
🪀 Outpost Bio is developing AI-driven models to decode human microbiology by combining automated experiments with ML, aiming to help pharma, food, and consumer companies design safer and more effective products.
🪀 Outpost’s Bio Lab-in-the-Loop platform combines automated experimentation with ML to create a closed feedback loop in which models learn from experimental results and guide subsequent testing.
Unreasonable Labs launched from stealth and closed a $13.5 million funding round
Unreasonable Labs announced it has launched from stealth and closed a $13.5M funding round led by Playground Global, with participation from AIX Ventures, E14 Fund, and MS&AD Ventures (Unreasonable Labs Emerges from Stealth with AI Platform for Scientific Discovery).
🪀 The company, founded by a former senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and an engineering professor at MIT, has built a foundational AI discovery engine designed to accelerate breakthroughs by composing new knowledge across chemistry, materials science, biology, and beyond.
🪀 The funding will be used to scale Unreasonable’s core technology, which pairs state of the art LLMs with a map of relationships and neurosymbolic mathematical abstractions that allow real-world patterns across disparate fields to enable generative discovery. Unreasonable’s unique pairing of capabilities creates a cross-disciplinary AI engine that moves beyond simple data retrieval to generate genuinely novel, validated scientific hypotheses, simulate solutions, and design experiments.
Salma Health launched with $80M Series A
Salma Health announced its official launch, as the next-generation brain health company that integrates advanced diagnostics, rapid-acting interventions and continuous care coordination under one roof, with a $80M Series A funding that was co-led by Mubadala Capital and ARCH Venture Partners with participation from Lingotto Horizon, as well as others, including Averin Capital (Salma Health Launches Integrated Brain Health Center of Excellence, Ushering in a New Era for Comprehensive Brain Care, Technology, and Research).
🪀 With this financing, Salma Health is positioned to build and operate centers of excellence designed to fundamentally reshape how brain conditions are diagnosed, treated and studied.
🪀 Salma Health's model is built for patients who have often tried multiple therapies without meaningful improvement. Salma Health delivers personalized care using the most advanced, evidence-based treatments available today – from conventional and accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and SAINT® neuromodulation protocols to esketamine therapy, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. Each treatment plan is built through rigorous clinical assessment and delivered by specialized teams focused on personalization and safety.
Google Opens New AI Center in Berlin With €5.5 Billion Investment
Google opened a 🆕 AI center in Berlin as part of a €5.5 billion investment program aimed at expanding the company’s infrastructure in Germany by 2029 and supporting wider adoption of AI technologies across the country (Google Opens New AI Center in Berlin With €5.5 Billion Investment).
🪀 The new Google AI Center brings together teams from Google DeepMind, Google Research, and Google Cloud in a single location in the German capital.
🪀 The facility, located in the historic Forum building on Museum Island in Berlin’s Mitte district, also includes an AI Demo Space designed to showcase the latest developments in artificial intelligence. The center is intended to strengthen cooperation with universities, policymakers, and industry partners while helping position Germany as a major European hub for AI innovation.
Breakout Ventures eyes neuroscience and AI with new fund
Investment firm Breakout Ventures has $114M in new venture capital funds that it expects to put toward neuroscience 🧠 start-ups and firms using technology to make science scalable (Breakout Ventures eyes neuroscience and AI with new fund).
🪀 Breakout has already invested some of the money, which it identifies as Fund III, in three start-ups:
➡️ Reach Industries, a maker of robotics software for labs;
➡️ an unnamed firm using computational chemistry for small-molecule discovery; and
➡️ another unnamed firm focused on commercializing novel science.
More News 👓
Berkeley Lab Team Helps Develop AQuaRef
Researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), along with an international team of researchers, just published a collaborative study published in Nature Communications that unveiled a new computing program that offers a faster and more accurate way to determine protein structure at a new level of precision (Berkeley Lab Team Helps Develop ‘AQuaRef’ AI-Quantum Approach for Protein Structure Modeling).
📌 The tool, dubbed AI-enabled Quantum Refinement, or AQuaRef for short, uses quantum-mechanical calculations (QM) and AI to predict the highly-accurate placement of atoms and electrons to determine a protein’s molecular structure.
📌 AQuaRef is based on AIMNet2 machine learned interatomic potential (MLIP) mimicking QM at substantially lower computational costs. By refining 4️⃣1️⃣ cryo-EM and 3️⃣0️⃣ X-ray structures, this approach yields atomic models with superior geometric quality compared to standard techniques, while maintaining an equal or better fit to experimental data. Notably, AQuaRef aids in determining proton positions, as illustrated in the challenging case of short hydrogen bonds in the parkinsonism-associated human protein DJ-1 and its bacterial homolog YajL.
📌 This program is a part of Phenix, a comprehensive software suite that generates realistic computer models used by structural biologists around the world to solve macromolecular structures.
Redwood AI Corp is receiving inquiries from organizations in sectors beyond its initial focus on AI-driven chemistry
Redwood AI Corp, a Vancouver-based AI company, has begun receiving inquiries from organizations in sectors beyond its initial focus on AI-driven chemistry for potential drug development. The company’s AI platform, which was originally developed to accelerate pharmaceutical discovery, is now being explored for uses in defense 🪖🛡️ and public safety 🛟🦺☣️, such as chemical hazard and threat screening, rapid characterization of unknown compounds, analysis of chemical signatures, and enhanced assessment of precursor chemical supply chains (Redwood AI Exploring Opportunities for AI Platform Across Industries).
📌 Redwood’s AI platform combines AI-driven chemical synthesis design, predictive chemical analysis, and advanced data modeling capabilities that may be applicable to a broad range of use cases, including chemical hazard detection, analysis of precursor chemical supply chains, and the accelerated development of medical countermeasures.
MindWalk: B Cell Llama platform targets bispecific and cell therapies
MindWalk Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: HYFT) is showcasing B Cell Llama, a VHH nanobody discovery platform built on its B Cell Select infrastructure (New MindWalk (NASDAQ: HYFT) B Cell Llama platform targets bispecific and cell therapies), that it focuses on llama‑derived single‑domain antibodies, which are attractive building blocks for bispecifics, multispecifics, and CAR‑T therapies, markets cited as reaching tens of billions of dollars.
📌 The supporting biomacromolecules study highlights three attributes: multivalent VHH formats delivered sub‑nanomolar potency with 1️⃣0️⃣–2️⃣5️⃣‑fold gains over monovalent versions, modular constructs neutralized variants that resisted monovalent formats and approved therapies, and VHH‑nanoparticle complexes were internalized by immune‑memory‑linked cells, suggesting a possible immune‑priming effect.
📌 The work also found that the tightest binder had no functional activity, reinforcing MindWalk’s emphasis on LensAI™ ranking candidates by function, not binding alone. The platform fits into a pipeline spanning dengue, universal influenza, GLP‑1 and longevity therapeutics, ALK‑1, and nanobody programs; future disclosures and clinical data will determine how much value this adds.
TechBio Update
Nvidia and Droplet Biosciences
Nvidia continues its deep dive into expanding AI technology in the medtech and cancer research arenas, this time with diagnostics maker Droplet Biosciences (Nvidia dives deeper into medtech, cancer research with Droplet Biosciences).
➡️ Droplet, which focuses on lymph-based liquid biopsy testing, has leveraged Nvidia’s AI infrastructure Parabricks, a GPU-accelerated software that dramatically speeds genomic data analysis for DNA sequencing.
➡️ The diagnostics company cited a new case study that indicated a significant reduction in key analysis steps that went from days to hours using Parabricks.
➡️ Variant calling, which identifies differences between a person’s DNA sequence and a known reference genome to detect genetic variations responsible for diseases, was reduced from taking up to 3️⃣6️⃣ hours to less than 3️⃣ hours. Sequence alignment saw a reduction from about 1️⃣0️⃣ hours to just under 1️⃣ hour with overall analysis timelines shrunk from 1️⃣0️⃣ days to 2️⃣ days.
Insilico Medicine announced that the out-licensing of its AI-discovered oral therapy for chronic kidney disease
Insilico Medicine has entered an exclusive pipeline out-licensing collaboration with TaiGen Biotechnology and its wholly owned Beijing subsidiary, TaiGen Biopharmaceuticals (AI-powered CKD drug ISM4808 licensed for kidney disease therapy).
➡️ The agreement grants TaiGen exclusive rights to develop, commercialize and sub-license ISM4808, a PHD inhibitor, across the Greater China region.
➡️ The discovery and development journey of the ISM4808 series was published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.