Venture Studio, Connected Health

Brooklyn, New York
Joined December 2006
Marcel Botha retweeted
Demis Hassabis says he can cure every disease in 10 years. Most people roll their eyes when they hear this, but I don't. Demis is the guy who just won the Nobel Prize for solving protein folding with AI (a problem biologists had been stuck on for 50 years). But that was just one milestone in his much grander plan. In 2010, he founded DeepMind with a 2-part mission: "solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else." Step 1: make AI good enough to do real science. Step 2: point that AI at humanity's biggest problems. Step one was AlphaFold. He used AI to figure out the 3D shape of every protein in nature (which is basically what every drug attaches to). Demis said it would have taken "a billion years of PhD time" to do by hand. Step two is curing all disease. And as of today, step two is fully funded. Isomorphic Labs (his AI drug discovery company inside Google) just raised $2.1B led by Thrive Capital. Here's where the money goes and what Demis thinks happens next: > Drug discovery currently takes 5-10 years and costs billions per drug. That math is why most diseases don't have good treatments today. > AI fixes the math. Their drug design engine compresses development from years to months. Maybe weeks. > Isomorphic's first AI-designed cancer drug enters human trials this year. > Their pipeline expands beyond the current 17 programs across cancer, immune diseases, and heart disease into more health domains. > The endgame is personalized medicine: drugs designed overnight for your specific biology and your specific disease. That last one is the whole point. Today's drugs are mass-produced for an "average" patient who doesn't really exist. So most existing treatments work inconsistently from person to person, and most rare diseases never get a treatment at all (no market = no drug). When drug design gets fast and cheap, that whole calculus flips. Cancer variants get drugs designed for that specific variant, rare diseases get treatments because economics stop mattering, and drug-resistant infections get new drugs faster than they can evolve. That's what curing every disease actually looks like. Now imagine what your life looks like in 2036. A doctor draws your blood, sequences your genome, sends your disease profile to an AI. By morning the AI has designed a custom drug for your specific biology. Side effects, dosage, drug interactions all worked out before you take the first pill. You and your kids never see a cancer ward. That's what $2.1B is buying today. Demis was right about AlphaFold. If you consider the possibility that he's right again, every disease alive today is on borrowed time.
I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health. That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease! We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.
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No way this was self inflicted. Who is buying the movie rights? Sad that it had to end this way. We should all boycott any Boeing flights and the government should hold all these executives accountable apple.news/AFFHr8OAKTl-vFYOo… @boeing #boeing
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Marcel Botha retweeted
Shout-outs to @jpmorgan @brexHQ @firstrepublic teams. All online this weekend working with founders and our team.
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Newlab Open House Party - Come see what 10XBeta has been up to, and where we are heading next! #10xbeta #newlab #bnydc #nyc #medtech #medtechinnovator newlab.com/event/newlabs-ann…
Adhering to a personal hygiene regimen is the same as making your bed - you do it for yourself, not other people. #selfcare #stupidexcuses
"Don’t get me wrong. I like showers. But it’s one thing off my plate." Some people say they've been bathing less during the pandemic. And it's a habit they might keep. nyti.ms/2QOY3ep
Love these....
Can't. Stop. Watching.
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Gold.
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From Battleships to Ventilators - how @Newlab has transformed an old @BklynNavyYard building into a haven for tech startups! @NY1 #Newlab #Brooklyn #Tech #entrepreneurs #NYC
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Pushing movie release dates out because "it has to be watched in a cinema" is naive - I love cinemas but you will not see me, & many others there for next couple years - deal with your new reality @ParamountPics and release through contemporary channels. cnn.com/2020/07/24/entertain…
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Humbled by the interest in getting the story out and I hope it offers inspiration for other up-and-coming innovators, doctors, scientists, programmers, engineers, and makers to focus on meaningful impactful challenges. fastcompany.com/90582213/how…
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Marcel Botha retweeted
Newlab is honored to be named @FastCompany's Innovation by Design Company of the Year. Two Newlab ventures, Spiro Devices, and Applied XL, are also named as finalists. Learn more: bit.ly/33fOybq #newlab #transformativetechnology #tech #InnovationbyDesign
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Marcel Botha retweeted
On this week's episode of Design Lab, I asked @johnmaeda practical advice on how to more creative. bit.ly/designlabpod
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