Event next week at the Crick: Turning great science into real products luma.com/49uq4htk

The BII startup accelerator program for academic esearchers and innovators - Venture Lab is open for applications (call closes January 28th). Link in thread.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Physicists coming into neuroscience: I would simply control all the variables

Fresh fund for UK life science venture firm thenextleap.is/news/epidare...

Researchers at the Crick, @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social and @tudresden.bsky.social have worked out a method to track and analyse complex molecules that sense external messages crucial for cell growth and behaviour. www.crick.ac.uk/news/2026-01...

Crazy thread!

Ok, but why make everything so complicated

In many jurisdictions output of AI models is not considered patentable or copyright, so I am not sure how this would be enforceable

Austria's new industrial strategy includes a fund of funds that will focus on spinouts and scale-ups thenextleap.is/news/austria...

Job opportunities for tech transfer folks:

A long, absolutely must-read article from Cory Doctorow: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Multiple sclerosis has been shown to have two subtypes. The discovery was enabled by UCL #spinout and KQ Labs alumnus Queen Square Analytics www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

This is quite a post www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/reality-is...

Already excited about this!

Can AI accelerate exciting science, or is it just giving us more incremental papers to wade through? timrequarth.substack.com/p/before-ai-...

Niels Bohr famously dissolved two Nobel Prize medals in aqua regia rather than let fascists have them www.npr.org/sections/kru...

More details emerge on how mRNA vaccines work:

Special Vault protein see RNA, go nom nom

Another rare bit of good news!

They're selling a centrifuge at work in case anyone wants one I kind of do but im not sure what id do with it

Noubar Afeyan, one of biotech's top investors and co-founder of Moderna, says U.S. policy is ‘taking a sledgehammer to our miracle machine.’ Story via @matthewherper.bsky.social for @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/01/12/n...

It's all getting a bit toppy

The ‘town square’ analogy of X/Twitter was always terrible, but, yes, if this sort of thing is going on your town square, it’s time to move town.

New family of biological foundation models based on 10x protein diversity compared to all public databases combined, collected over five years from more than 150 locations across 28 countries and five continents www.genengnews.com/topics/artif...

NAMs (new approach methodologies) in pharma/biotech must be the worst bit of industry nomenclature since LTE (long term evolution) in the telecomms industry. Even if you know what words the acronym stands for, it doesn't give you any hint of what it refers to.

“We’re gonna need a bigger bus”

JPM starts today and the #biotech announcements are starting to roll in...

Conversion by directed evolution of a DNA polymerase into an multipurpose enzyme for RNA synthesis, reverse transcription and synthesis of DNA-RNA chimeras www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New biotech venture fund for U Penn. Interestingly it is backed by BioNTech thenextleap.is/news/penn-px... #spinout

New pharma corporate venture fund endpoints.news/servier-laun...

Almost 80 European deep tech university spinouts reached $1B valuations or $100M in revenue in 2025 https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/353985/ Universities and research labs have long been Europe’s deep tech treasure trove. Now, academic spinouts have consolidated into…

UCL spinout EpilepsyGTx has raised $33M Series A to advance its gene therapy EPY201 into clinical trials, offering hope for millions with refractory epilepsy. We are pleased to have supported this lab-to-market journey from the early stage. Details: bit.ly/4qXYGxJ

Amgen to acquire Oxford spinout Dark Blue, tucking in a preclinical cancer drug – Endpoints News https://www.europesays.com/uk/679295/ Amgen to acquire Oxford spinout Dark Blue, tucking in a preclinical cancer drug  Endpoints News Amgen swoops on UK…

I strongly suggest this read on the topic and LLM antropomorphism: The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

Is this the new direction for AI in drug discovery - commoditise the models, but monetise bespoke implementation? endpoints.news/exclusive-bo...

Shucks, will there be any British Grand Tour winners left in the peloton?

Tickets available for the Crick Rare Diseases Conference on 23rd February www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/5th...

Japan is set to join #HorizonEurope, becoming the largest country to associate with the EU’s #research programme and strengthening Europe’s role as a global hub for #scientific cooperation. 📌 Read more here: buff.ly/mQLYu1j

UCL gene therapy #spinout EpilepsyGTx raises $33 million www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/de...

Researchers at the @crick.ac.uk have discovered how certain proteins that become exposed when tumour cells die can prompt an immune response. www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-12...

Ok here it is - out of 44 FDA approvals this year, 31 are small molecules (70%), 26 of those are oral drugs (84%), 22 of them are chiral (71%). This is the largest number and percentage of chiral FDA approved molecules in a single year. Fitusiran is not a small molecule, bonus.

Lambrini Girls Aloud

Accidentally made a supergroup: And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead Kennedys

Lambrini Girls Aloud

Accidentally made a supergroup: And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead Kennedys

The University of Sheffield had a record 10 new spinouts in 2025, as well as new patents and £41m raised by spinout companies. Sheffield is a leading innovation hub with particular strength in deep tech and life science companies, ranking in the UK top ten for spinout impact. buff.ly/ERD21vc

Steam is, of course, a chemical

Good news in science funding

Latest preprint from Jack Scannell is a model for valuing drug candidates that takes into account the predictive validity of the tools used to make progress decisions www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2503.221...