The Bio Report

Sandbox AQ, the Alphabet spin-out backed with $500 million in investment, in June 2023 unveiled it AQBioSim division. The division is working to bring SandoxAQ’s AI and quantum-inspired computing to develop new treatments for intractable medical conditions including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The company is working with leading drug developers and university medical centers to accelerate drug development, reduce costs, and improve the rate of clinical success. We spoke to Nadia Harhen, general manager of simulation and optimization for SandboxAQ, about the challenges of drug development it is seeking to address, how Sandbox AQ is leveraging quantum technologies, and why it is seeking to tackle an intractable set of diseases. One note: As we were preparing to publish this episode, Sandbox AQ announced it acquired Good Chemistry, a computational chemistry company that leverages AI, quantum, and other advanced technologies to accelerate drug discovery. The deal is expected to enhance SandboxAQ’s existing computational chemistry and simulation capabilities, adding talent, technologies, and industry insights.

It’s long been understood that chromosomal instability (CIN) is a characteristic of cancer cells, but it also represents a key difference between cancer cells and healthy cells that can be exploited. Volastra is developing medicines for a wide range of difficult-to-treat cancers that target the vulnerabilities of these cells. We spoke to Charles Hugh-Jones, CEO of Volastra, about chromosomal instability in cancer cells, how the company is developing a pipeline of therapies to exploit this, and its expanding relationships with Big Pharma.

Though the year began with a banking crisis and has been marked with layoffs and restructurings, we have managed to avoid a feared recession. It’s been a big year for new drug approvals, M&A activity has been brisk, and biotech stocks have rallied in recent weeks pushing the widely watched S&P biotech index into positive territory. We continue our annual tradition to look back across the year in biotech and ahead to JPMorgan and beyond with Adam Feuerstein, Polk award-winning journalist and senior biotech writer for STAT. We spoke to Feuerstein about the biotech news that shaped 2023, the year’s best and worst CEOs, and what’s ahead in 2024.

Vik Bajaj has long lived at the intersection of physical sciences, engineering, data science, and the life sciences—first as an academic working to improve diagnostic imaging at Stanford University and later as a chief scientific officer at GRAIL and Verily. Now, as a founder and CEO of Foresite Labs, the technologist turned venture capitalist is using his experience to create new companies that are leveraging AI and other technologies to transform healthcare. We spoke to Bajaj about the changing data landscape around healthcare, the potential for technology to improve health outcomes, and what it takes for an entrepreneur to get his attention today.   

Interleukin-2 therapies have been seen as promising ways to treat solid tumors, but they have proven challenging because of the ability of IL-2 to both activate and suppress the immune system. Their effectiveness has been limited because of potentially toxic side effects, which have included vascular leak syndrome and pulmonary edema. Aulos Biosciences believes the AI-based approach to computational drug design used for its lead experimental therapy allows it to unlock the power of IL-2 without triggering the concerning side effects of existing therapies. We spoke to Aron Knickerbocker, president and CEO of Aulos Bioscience, about the potential for IL-2 therapies to treat solid tumors, the limits of today's IL-2 therapies, and the AI-based design behind its experimental IL-2 therapy in development.

Real-world data promises to provide insights that lead to better therapies, change how we treat diseases, and improve outcomes for patients. One of the limits of realizing benefits from all of the health information we are swimming in is the lack of access to high-quality data in a usable format. Verana Health has built partnerships with medical societies to provide access to exclusive, real-world data from a network of more than 20,000 clinicians. We spoke to Sujay Jadhav, CEO of Verana Health, about the potential for real-world data to improve our understanding of health, how Verana is addressing challenges these data can present, and the areas of medicine on which it is focused.

Artificial intelligence promises to reshape the healthcare landscape and deliver new insights into the molecular drivers of health and wellness, provide rapid diagnoses of patients, and discover and design therapies that extend beyond human imagination. Swaroop ‘Kittu’ Kolluri, founder and managing director of Neotribe Ventures, is using his experience as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to invest in the emerging TechBio space. We spoke to Kolluri about the state of AI, the potential of technology to transform healthcare, and Neotribe’s approach to investing.

Though many drug developers are harnessing AI to create novel chemical compounds, Iambic Therapeutic’s generative AI is leveraging quantum mechanics to get to better drugs. It says its physics-informed machine learning approach has yielded promising lead candidates with superior profiles in record time. In October, Iambic completed a $100 million series B financing round to support development of its platform and to advance multiple candidates into clinical development. We spoke to Tom Miller, co-founder and CEO of Iambic, about its AI platform,, the insights Iambic gains from using a quantum mechanics-based approach to drug discovery, and its growing pipeline of cancer therapies.

One of the challenges with treating Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosing patients early enough in the course of its progression to have a meaningful impact with treatments. Sunbird Bio said it can accurately detect and differentiate specific proteins that aggregate and signal the presence of Alzheimer's disease, with a simple blood draw. It said its test in development could address the growing need for more sensitive, reliable, non-invasive diagnostic tests to accelerate drug development and enhance patient care. We spoke to John McDonough, executive chair and CEO of Sunbird Bio, about its diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease, how it has the potential to impact treatments and outcomes for millions of patients with the condition, and how its merger with Glympse Bio is expected to push it into new markets.

About 40 percent of all drugs in the Western world are derived from plants. But challenges with producing a reliable supply inherent with materials derived from agricultural processes can lead to drug shortages as climate events, pests, and plant diseases can affect yields. Antheia is harnessing synthetic biology to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients as an alternative to reliance on crop production. We spoke to Christina Smolke, co-founder and CEO of Antheia, about the supply-chain challenges underlying drug shortages, how the company is using synthetic biology to create a reliable supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients, and its growing pipeline of products in development.