Studying influenza and cell intrinsic immunity @BiochemOxford (Masters student)
United Kingdom
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I’ve written a new story. Feedback is requested!
open.substack.com/pub/siddha…
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Haven’t read much into this, but how much of this can be attributed to regulatory decisions? Was reading @RuxandraTeslo piece on cell therapy hurdles a few weeks back and wondered if investors are wary of CAR-T because of recent safety issues + regulatory hurdles
I spoke with Caribou $CRBU CEO Rachel Haurwitz last night about the gut-wrenching decision to shut down after failing to raise money to move its off-the-shelf CAR-T for lymphoma into a Phase 3 study.
“Biotech companies close all the time, usually because the idea didn’t work, or the drug didn’t work. So, you wind down. You learned something, and you move on,” Haurwitz said.
“Our experience is incredibly disappointing. Our clinical signal is strong. The benefit to patients is compelling and commercial research shows the drug could be market-leading. But all of that isn’t enough in this fundraising environment to get over the hurdle to raise enough capital,” she added.
statnews.com/2026/10/07/cari…
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Sid retweeted
Mike 3 things to consider 1) Revenue growth as modeled by sell side analysts and others is not equal to what is in the models of people who actually own stock and trade it, long buy side active funds 2) Pharma equity trades on an earnings multiple not a revenue multiple, margin expansion vs contraction can also explain “above or below” this line and 3) Terminal value assumptions matter - Organizations and management teams that have consistently demonstrated the ability to deliver organic R&D (Vertex) or BD (Abbvie) productivity get rewarded with a management premium/increased terminal value because the bet is they will do it again.
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I wonder about the role LLMs have played in Nobel Prize decisions. Has anyone mapped how accurate their predictions are?
This would be tough to separate from them just being good predictors vs their decisions having influenced committee members, but still an interesting experiment
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I’d been in talks with an amazing startup over the past two weeks, founders seemed keen to have me as an intern, and it fell through today. Devastated.
I’ve been incredibly frustrated in my current position, and this seemed like a wonderful escape. An opportunity to work on something truly meaningful. This had elevated my mood substantially, I even started finding joy in my work!
It’s all gone now though. What a shame
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Sid retweeted
First announced patient dosing of an in vivo prime editing treatment (to correct ATP7B H1069Q, one of the most common genetic causes of Wilson disease). There are now at least three prime editing clinical trials underway—for CGD (ex vivo, with positive clinical outcomes), for Wilson disease (in vivo), and for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD, in vivo).
We announced the first patient has been dosed in our global Phase 1/2 clinical trial of PM577a for H1069Q-mutated Wilson disease.
PM577 has also received FDA Rare Pediatric Disease designation.
Read more: tinyurl.com/mue7xe9e
#PrimeMedicine #WilsonDisease #GeneEditing
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I have shown four people today one of my favorite mouse optogenetics videos and the responses are so interesting, very different to what my initial reaction was.
Concern/pity for the mouse was the main response for all, followed by a hesitancy towards this technology and whether they will be subjected to it by “insert tech billionaire name”
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This video inspired an awe that has remained with me since my freshman year. A well deserved prize!
BREAKING NEWS
The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
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Sid retweeted
To understand how the brain forms memories, feelings and behaviours has long been a dream for researchers.
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have been awarded the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries leading to optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain.
This method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.
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I like how targeting GPCRs has become a holy grail of sorts for the binder design companies. My initial impression of this space was that companies would sub-specialize on hard to drug targets, with Nabla taking GPCRs, but this doesn’t seem to be true!
Everyone is going for it and it doesn’t seem like any of these labs are focusing on certain targets. The pMHC is another target where this has happened, I wonder if Xaira will come out with something for it.
I’d be interested in seeing what happens when the first binders designed by these companies hits trials. If they were to fail, I doubt it would be because of the quality of the binder. More likely that the biological hypothesis was poor. But I am interested in seeing how the market then shifts its perceptions towards their services.
I also don’t know this, but does Nabla or Chai or Xaira offer insights to pharma on what to target? Or are their models only licensed for binder design?
We’ve been quiet about protein design at @Xaira_Thera . Here’s what we’ve been building:
Introducing X-Design, with results from two active drug programs that show what we think this field needs to deliver: speed to a useful lead, and access to targets that have resisted discovery.
→ 7 weeks from DNA synthesis to a preclinical lead on an oncology target, with the epitope and reagents already prepared.
→ A functional antibody antagonist against a challenging GPCR where conventional library screening AND llama immunization had failed.
The bar we set for our model goes well beyond binding.
The antibodies need to be human-like, functional, cross-reactive across species, and developable. Properties that have to come together in the same molecule for a program to move forward.
That’s what makes these results exciting to me: designs tested in the lab, meeting the requirements of real programs in our pipeline.
My bet is that the biggest impact of AI protein design will be expanding which diseases and targets we can pursue.
We want to choose targets because the biology is compelling and to build the ability to make the right molecules.
This is our first look at X-Design. Much more to come.
See our blog: xaira.com/news/de-novo-desig…
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I’ve admired your ability produce high quality, well crafted text consistently. How long does it take you to work on one? From conception - final edits.
Also, I struggle with writing. Getting the idea is easy, but actually translating that into coherent paragraphs takes long. Any tips to help with this?
i basically dont have time to write anymore. maybe ill release something once every 1-2 months, and even that is a stretch. im now squarely incapable of doing anything near my prior 1-2 week/article cadence. it was a good 2.5 year run!
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The pharma/biotech community is far more interesting than AIxBio. When the quality of your work is beholden to patient benefit, broadly speaking, high scientific rigor becomes a prerequisite.
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I think the way biology is taught is completely wrong. Lectures should be reduced to like half the amount currently prescribed in most curriculums. Beyond a certain point, the material should just be prescribed as independent reading.
Instead every student should be assigned to a lab or a separate space where they can pursue projects. They shouldn’t be like the wet lab work that typically accompanies course requirements. I found them dreadfully boring.
Rather, it can be low hanging fruits of true discovery. Like, isolate X gene from the tissue of chicken testes. (Or some comp bio equivalent of this). It can be something completely innocuous yet has never actually truly been isolated or characterized.
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