Rebecca Paul

Bomb just went off in my head (🤯) triggered by this paragraph in the Illumina Form 10. Says our lucky exec would have been paid the first tranche of their nutso $78M bonus as soon GRAIL revenue reached $500M/year prior to 2030. But the company now says NONE of this bonus will EVER get paid out. This means GRAIL itself projects sales won't reach $500M/year this decade (I'm shocked, shocked 🤪). BUT remember, this baby burns $700M in cash a year (🔥🔥🔥). Let's borrow Exact Sciences gross margins of 73%. That means GRAIL needs sales of $1B just to break even (stop burning investor money). But they JUST TOLD US GRAIL won't even get to $500M by 2030. So how much money does GRAIL need to get to break even? (Counts on fingers AND toes). Let's say GRAIL gets to $1B break even by 2034 - 10 years from now. Let's estimate it spends an average of 700/2 = $350M each year; it'll need $3.5B to get there and it's only going to have $1B in the bank on day 1, so there's $2.5B missing from the equation. Anywho, really curious to see what the GRAL stock price is when the spinout happens, nominally June 12th, 2024 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

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Our discovery of the orally available small molecule galectin 1 inhibitor GB1908 just got published in J Med Chem. Building on our discovery of GB1490 we have further improved the affinity into double digit nM. Optimisation of the PK properties resulted in the orally available GB1908. PK experiments propose a dose of 30 mg/kg BID in mice to reach free plasma levels over mouse Galectin-1 Kd. Using this dose GB1908 was shown to reduce growth of primary lung tumor LL/2 in syngeneic mouse. This paper is dedicated to former Galecto COO Anders Pedersen who sadly passed away on 4th of February 2024. We have over the years worked on many projects together including this one. Anders has played an important role in the galectin field over the last >10 years. For example he was instrumental in bringing the first small molecule galectin-3 inhibitors to clinic (GB0139 and GB1211). We miss you and your smile Anders! https://lnkd.in/dF4TcJZi

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Will AI revolutionize the biologics discovery process and replace everything else? I’m no AI expert, as you might have guessed from my embarrassing attempt to create illustrations of bispecific formats using ChatGPT. ☹ But AI is already driving dramatic changes, and this was evident at #PEGSEurope last week. The event featured detailed case studies highlighting the successful application of various AI tools, as well as a lively panel discussion with Rebecca Croasdale-Wood, Charlotte Deane, Andrew Bradbury, and Andreas Evers. While there was enthusiasm for the potential of AI methods, there was also a sense of caution about the hype and overselling of what AI can realistically achieve today and what it may be able to do in the future. A reality check has just been launched by a group of industry-leading experts through the AIntibody AI benchmarking initiative: https://www.aintibody.org The initiative was also described in Nature Biotechnology. https://lnkd.in/e6NyRiTw I’m excited to see how this unfolds. It looks like we may see results as early as next year. #developability #antibodydiscovery #leadoptimization #AI

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"The hype will play out in the long term," James Fraser said. "The hard part of drug discovery (is) it's a pretty long business. You can't take the wet lab part out of it yet. Stuff needs to play out in the clinic." Ron Leuty takes an in-depth look at Profluent and how #AI has become a force in drug development (biologics & small molecule). We are seeing this play out in applications to the QB3 mentoring program. It is striking how many new companies are touting that their use of AI/ML provides a competitive advantage. It's almost more remarkable if a drug discovery company is NOT using AI. And it is very hard to judge the longer-term commercial prospects of a new company whose approach relies on AI/ML. Obviously the quality of the data the models are using is paramount. Anyone with thoughts about how to assess these companies, please weigh in! https://lnkd.in/gaVr3CPj

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Hi LinkedInVerse, Interested to get people's thoughts on this news story? As many in the Medical Devices, Biotech and Drug Discovery sectors has noticed over the last year, funding/investments have not been released, even when promised and contracts signed. I've noticed a little upturn in roles recently, which hopefully means funding/investments are now being released, is this other people's recent experience? I wish any of the political parties were talking more specifically about this, and hopefully this think tank may make them do this. https://lnkd.in/eizJ6s9Q #Investment #MedicalDevices #Biotech #DrugDiscovery IPPR #TheInstituteforPublicPolicyResearch

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Testing out new Chat GPT 4.0... It's remarkably good at summarising and producing structured answers. Hey Chap GTP, What impact do you think iPSCs will have on ALS drug discovery? ChatGPT Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are expected to significantly impact amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) drug discovery in several key ways: Disease Modeling: iPSCs can be generated from patients with ALS and differentiated into motor neurons, the cell type primarily affected by the disease. This allows researchers to create patient-specific models of ALS in the lab. These models are invaluable for studying disease mechanisms and for screening potential drug candidates in a context that closely mimics human pathology. Personalized Medicine: Because iPSCs can be derived from individual patients, they facilitate the study of genetic variability in ALS. Researchers can explore how different genetic mutations contribute to the disease and how patients with different genetic backgrounds respond to treatments. This paves the way for personalized medicine approaches, where treatments can be tailored to the genetic profile of individual patients. High-Throughput Drug Screening: iPSC-derived neurons can be used in high-throughput screening to test thousands of compounds for potential therapeutic effects. This approach can rapidly identify promising drug candidates that can then be further validated in more complex models and eventually in clinical trials. Understanding Disease Mechanisms: iPSCs provide a platform for investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying ALS. By differentiating iPSCs into various neural cell types, scientists can study the interactions between motor neurons, astrocytes, and other cell types involved in ALS pathology. This comprehensive understanding is crucial for identifying new therapeutic targets. Testing Drug Toxicity and Efficacy: iPSC-derived motor neurons can be used to test the toxicity and efficacy of drug candidates before they enter clinical trials. This helps ensure that only the most promising and safest drugs move forward in the drug development pipeline, potentially reducing the time and cost associated with bringing new therapies to market. In summary, iPSCs offer a versatile and powerful tool for ALS drug discovery. They enable the creation of disease models that closely replicate human pathology, facilitate personalized medicine, support high-throughput drug screening, improve our understanding of disease mechanisms, and offer new avenues for testing drug safety and efficacy. These advantages collectively accelerate the pace of discovery and increase the likelihood of finding effective treatments for ALS. #ipscs #chatgpt

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🙌…and therapy developers push even harder to implement our revolutionary Celledonia™️ cell analyser at scale. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿An homage to Caledonia squared to the power of Celidonius (“a man born blind whom Jesus healed in the Gospel of John 9:1–38”): AuraCyt empowers our industry to finally “See the Unseen”… 1️⃣ predicting the unpredictable: high-producing clones in Cell Line Development - saving 3-6 crucial months in that process, every single time; 🧫 2️⃣ enabling scale-out of CGT to manufacture the unmanufacturable; 🧬 3️⃣ unlocking automation with rapid cell analysis for direct CGT process control;⏰ https://lnkd.in/e_bPw6Wz https://lnkd.in/eUE2Fhdw #CellAnalysis game-changer 👾| #CellAndGene | #CGT 🧬| #AdvancedTherapies 🧪 #SpeedToMarket 🏁 | #SpeedToPatient 👩‍🔬⌛️👨‍🔬

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Tempus AI stock on a tear ($7B market cap today!) gives me an idea for a fun deal 💡🤪 I've long been intrigued about the potential value of GRAIL's phenotype+genotype+methylome database - no way to know really but could be worth far more than Galleri (which seems to have very little value as GRAL market cap << cash). So, what if Tempus bought Grail? What would it get, and what would it cost? We can assume from this week's big Grail layoff that it now operates free and clear of EU restrictions, so I would think pretty much anyone except Illumina could buy it and do with what they wanted (yay capitalism!) The amazing thing buying Grail is that it has $1B in cash but has a market cap of just $500M. So you could offer a 30% premium and still come out of the deal with $350M profit and a fantastic database that could add a couple of billion to Tempus market cap. Tempus could sell Grail data to its pharma customers, restart development of the MRD and DAC tests just halted (Tempus rents its MRD test from Personalis), and save an massive amount of money by pausing Galleri sales - could be restarted in the (unlikely) event Galleri gets FDA approval and CMS reimbursement. Alas there is a fly in the ointment of this whacky plan! There's a clawback clause that requires that if Grail is bought in the 15 month period after the spinout, a bunch of the cash has to get back to Illumina. I think it is: $clawback = $500M x (15 - months-since-spin)/15. So, doesn't work out to buy Grail right now as Illumina would get $500M back and we think we need $650M to buy. But (yay algebra! can you tell I'm on a long flight today? 🤣) if Tempus waits 5 months then Illumina only gets back $350M leaving $650 in bank 👏 So, my unsolicited advice is for Tempus AI is buy Grail in December 2024 and it won't cost you a dime and you'll have an amazing data asset and your own MRD test 🤣🤣🤣

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Zero-Knowledge Proofs models have the potential to revolutionize drug development and accelerate the implementation of new science like never before. Recently at a bio/acc conference I unveiled ABRA, the Biotech Solution for Network States. The Advanced Biotechnology Regulatory Agency (ABRA) is a pioneering regulatory body established to decentralize the biotech regulatory framework, with a focus exclusively on drug products. ABRA's mission is to accelerate the implementation of scientific advancements, making it faster, cheaper, and more precise to bring novel therapies to market. The agency aims to revolutionize the current drug approval process by addressing critical inefficiencies in the existing system. ABRA is designed to serve as a transformative force in the biotech industry by: ✦Accelerating the time to market for new therapies ✦Incorporating Zero-Knowledge Proof models ✦Reducing the cost of drug development ✦Enhancing precision in treatments through personalization I'm excited to share more details about this project next month in Asia. Alice Gilman Danilo Tomanovic Pedro "Henrich" Azevedo Niklas Anzinger Maria Nimfuehr @balajissrinivasan

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How to differentiate hype from substance in the AI drug discovery space? A pretty cool take by Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, co-founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine, published in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News today. Alex suggests to ask 10 simple but clear questions when evaluating AI drug discovery companies for the purpose of invstment or partnering: ✔ How many of your internally discovered drugs are in Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III? ✔ Did any of your pharma partnerships progress into Phase I, II, and III, and how long did it take? ✔ How many preclinical candidates (PCCs) did you nominate in a single year and in total? ✔ How long, on average, does it take you to nominate a PCC, and how much does it cost? ✔ What was the level of novelty of the targets and what is the level of novelty of the molecules? ✔ How long, on average, does it take you to go into clinical trials with an AI-discovered target? ✔ Did you in-license any of your drugs from other companies, repurpose them, or discover them internally? ✔ How many pharma companies use your AI software to discover drugs, and how many users do you have? How many renew every year? ✔ What was your revenue last year, and what was the revenue growth year over year? ✔ How much money have you raised, in how many rounds, and what is the valuation of your last round? What do you think? Write additional questions in the comments. I have my thoughts on it, but it is a topic for another post... #drugdiscovery #drugdesign #deeplearning Image credit: iStock

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We recently sat down with Dr. George Wang, Vice President of Discovery and Preclinical Services at WuXi Biologics to discuss the importance of looking at developability of an antibody early in the drug discovery process. In the podcast, The Importance of Evaluating Developability in the Antibody Discovery Stage, Dr. Wang defines developability and its significance in achieving scalable production during CMC development, which is essential for large-scale manufacturing before clinical trials. He emphasizes the importance of identifying and addressing developability concerns early in the discovery stage to mitigate risks and ensure cost-effective development. Dr. Wang provides examples where developability studies have helped prevent unforeseen costs and timeline disruptions during biologics discovery and preclinical development phases. He underscores that assessing developability can reveal issues with product aggregation, stability, solubility, or manufacturing efficiencies. https://lnkd.in/gNb8345B

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Despite the success of delivery technologies such as lipid nanoparticles and trivalent GalNAc conjugation, targeted delivery of oligonucleotides to extra hepatic tissues remains a challenge. At this year’s OPT Congress, WuXi AppTec presented a poster showing the utilization of our peptide-based DNA-encoded library screening platform to identify endocytosis receptor-binding peptides. The binding affinity of hit peptides was confirmed through biophysical assays, and target-based delivery efficiency in breast cancer cells was evaluated by flow cytometry. These results highlight the potential of this approach for developing peptide-oligonucleotide conjugates for peptide-based drug delivery. Click below to view our poster. Questions? Contact us by clicking here: https://lnkd.in/eG97YXCs #DrugDiscovery #DEL #Endocytosis #Peptides #PeptideConjugates https://lnkd.in/gvKx75-J

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Despite the success of delivery technologies such as lipid nanoparticles and trivalent GalNAc conjugation, targeted delivery of oligonucleotides to extra hepatic tissues remains a challenge. WuXi AppTec recently presented a poster showing the utilization of our peptide-based DNA-encoded library screening platform to identify endocytosis receptor-binding peptides. The binding affinity of hit peptides was confirmed through biophysical assays, and target-based delivery efficiency in breast cancer cells was evaluated by flow cytometry. These results highlight the potential of this approach for developing peptide-oligonucleotide conjugates for peptide-based drug delivery. Curious to learn more? Click 👇 to view our poster. Questions? Contact us by clicking here: https://lnkd.in/eG97YXCs #Biotech #Biopharma #DrugDiscovery #DEL #Endocytosis #Peptides #PeptideConjugates https://lnkd.in/gvKx75-J

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Thanks to Brian K. Buntz for this lovely profile of me in R&D - Research & Development World ---- Ari Gesher, a veteran technologist who helped shape SourceForge in its heyday and was a key player at Palantir, the publicly-traded big data analytics company, wants to build a fully automated “lights-off” lab for drug discovery at Parallel Bio. “I’m using our biologists to prototype what the scientific processes are, then we’re going to build automation.” Gersher will serve as head of technology. The aim is to use proprietary, novel immune data to drive AI-powered drug discovery. Parallel Bio’s website notes that the “massive scale of organoid populations generates novel immune training data at unprecedented rates.” The system can then validate AI-discovered candidates in vitro in a large population. Gesher envisions a future where biologists focus more on designing experiments rather than executing them. In this scenario, a researcher might say, “I want to run this experiment. I need 50 different human models from different donors. I want to show the results of both control and treatment branches of the experiment,” Gesher said. These parameters could be input into a system that would then carry out the experiment autonomously. As Gesher puts it, “Your whole frame rate increases, your ability to do different kinds of experiments changes your relationship to the labs.” This approach doesn’t just speed up existing processes; it opens up entirely new avenues for scientific inquiry. https://lnkd.in/gGfwGesu

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https://lnkd.in/eWsz7CcU With over 60 references, The Neospora Antibody Test Kit from VMRD, Inc. and available from 2BScientific Ltd. employs a competitive ELISA technique to detect the presence of Neospora caninum antibodies in serum samples from cattle. 🐝 Exceptional Precision: Evidenced through sensitivity and specificity assessments, ensuring dependable identification of both positive and negative sera. 🐝 Distinct Discrimination: 5% of sera registered within ±5% of the cut-off value, underscoring exact differentiation between positive and negative samples. 🐝 Streamlined Screening: Streamlines the examination of extensive sample sets, as evidenced by the analysis of 4,323 sera with unknown serologic statuses. 🐝 Robust Confidence: Minimal overlap near the cut-off value inspires assurance in the kit's accuracy. For your own research reagents, get in contact at sales@2bscientific.com with any queries about this ELISA, our products, or anything concerning life science! #petwelfare #neospora #hereforyou

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Happy belated International Women in Engineering day! Top left photo was from 10 years ago at UCL when we were asked to put down what we want to do as engineers and bottom right photo was from the ISCT, International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy conference a couple weeks ago :) 🔵 What happened over the past 10 years? - Managed a cell & gene therapy facility build (right middle picture) - Did a DPhil looking at supply chain and capacity planning for cell and gene therapies - Published articles and book chapters on cell and gene therapies, companion diagnostics, and digital health - Worked on many different projects across the value chain in life sciences across operations, manufacturing, strategy etc 🔵 What changed: - Didn't end up making drugs or developing bioprocesses myself, more supporting the many people who do - Didn't end up going into academia, but still supervising Masters' engineering students - Beyond bioprocess and manufacturing, I've learned so much about what it takes to bring therapies to patients: supply chains, quality systems, clinical trials and operations, commercial, etc 🔵 What didn't change: - Still a biochemical engineer at heart who wants to bring cost-effective therapies to improve patients' lives - Still wear that UCL Engineering "Change the world" T-shirt to bed #changetheworld #INWED24 #engineering #womeninengineering #STEM #10yearchallenge

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Today is my last day at Oxford Nanopore. I joined the company over 17 years ago straight out of my postdoc when the company was around 10 people.  It’s now a public company, around 1,500 strong and has offices and users all around the globe. It’s been an amazing adventure to be part of the phenomenal growth at nanopore and the technical hurdles we’ve overcome. When I joined, no one had ever sequenced DNA using a nanopore. Many of the PhD students and post-docs in the Founder’s lab didn’t even believe it was possible – “vapourware” and “cold-fusion” were expressions used. When I left academia, I thought good research would make the endeavour successful. On my journey, I learnt that a collective vision, belief, and sense of purpose was what really drove success. Every company has a vision now - writing a statement is easy, but as I witnessed at Nanopore, a culture where people live it, with a real sense of purpose, is a rare thing indeed. The ability to focus a group of intelligent and enthusiastic scientists behind a common vision is not trivial, but if you can channel the collective effort, the results are great. We first sequenced a small strand of synthetic DNA in Mar 2011. I always found it reassuring that individuals believed their part of the project would succeed, even if they had doubts about the other areas. In the end, making real progress requires trust in those around you. Individuals may join an organisation for the scientific challenge, or the stock options, or the ability to change the world, but they stay because of the people. I’m lucky to have worked with a group of phenomenal people, both in terms of their professional abilities and their strength of character when we were really up against it. Seventeen years is a long time to spend in one place and investing some of your time in those around you really pays off over that period – it’s especially important when you have benefitted from being mentored yourself, as I have at nanopore. A massive thanks to all those who have helped me on this journey – it’s been crazy hard at times but looking back it was enormous fun. It's now time for a new challenge - trying to replicate some for the success of the last 17 years with a new startup. Not an easy thing to do, but I know that my biggest regret would be if I didn’t try. Whatever happens this time, I can say that I’ve worked for a company that has made significant impact, created jobs, and given scientists new tools and understanding. Rewind to the 26-year-old me, sitting as a temp in the office of an insurance company while filling out his application to an Oxford post-doc position – I think he would be happy with how it all worked out.

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Just stumbled upon the most brilliant piece of tech nostalgia: Macaulay Culkin recreating Home Alone scenes to showcase Google Assistant!  Who would've thought that 30+ years later, Kevin McCallister wouldn't need elaborate contraptions to outsmart intruders - just a simple "Hey Google" would do! It's fascinating how we've evolved from rigging household items into security systems to controlling our entire homes with voice commands. Pretty sure even the 'Wet Bandits' would've thought twice about targeting a smart home! Love how this ad perfectly captures both the evolution of home technology and my childhood favorite movie moments. Makes you wonder though: If Kevin had Google Assistant back then, would we have missed out on all those classic scenes? #Automation #TechHumor #Innovation #HomeAlone #Nostalgia #SmartHome #ProductivityTools"

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