Professor Oak

Biopharma Musings | Genetic Medicine & Rare Disease | Buyside Turned Operator | Not Investment Advice | DYODD

[Samuel Hume @DrSamuelBHume]

Lorlatinib wears the crown for first-line treatment of advanced ALK+ lung cancer, which typically affects younger, non-smokers:

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

@Biotenic Congratulations - to both you and the lucky fund. Thanks for your contributions here; hope they continue in some form

[Sternberg Lab @SternbergLab]

1/8 🚨 New preprint from the @SternbergLab & Jinek labs! CRISPR-associated transposases (CASTs) insert large DNA cargoes at precise genomic locations — no double-strand breaks needed.

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Expect more of this

Interesting implications not only for China but also for domestic fast-followers... how can you have confidence in your head-to-head functional assay if you don't know you made the right comparator?

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

So we’re all just ignoring the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of biobucks + royalties + China rights + NewCo equity?

[Pearl Freier @PearlF]

A US-based biotech VC told @damiangarde: "you can spend $10 million on a best-in-class drug from China, or you can hire 25 people in the US & pay them some $40 million over 3 years to get to the exact same point. In general, going with China works out to a roughly 50% cost savings, he said, meaning the same monetary investment can fund double the work."

[Andrew Shen @andrew7shen]

Autonomous science promises to augment scientific discovery, but current LLMs tend to mode collapse into low-diversity generations. We introduce “Unlocking LLM Creativity in Science through Analogical Reasoning”, which uses analogies to generate better candidate solutions! [1/N]

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Speaking of, ENTIRELY too much in vivo CAR-T this year. Hundreds of abstracts, of which just a few piqued my interest

Kelonia $LLY BCMA-LVV non-clin data de-risk key specificity Q’s for LVV, as profile - in terms of both transduction & expression - looks v clean (#2264)

$OPK CD3xCD28-targeted LNP to deliver CD19 CAR mRNA, an interesting strategy to enhance specificity & T cell activation (#338)

$SNY tLNP-CD19 CAR (#343) reminded me Tidal M&A was in 2021! 3-5 yrs before all of pharma aped in, yet hopelessly behind today… (19/21)

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Due to popular demand, after a brief hiatus, Oak’s ASGCT abstract dump is back - now it’s 5th installment, better than ever

Posting later than I’d hoped - still shaking off the rust - but the show must go on; & what’s better than starting ASGCT Day 2 with the thread you needed 2 weeks ago?

(1/21)

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Letting AI carry us on over to “C”…

Inaugural data release from Lila, the company “building scientific superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges,” is... an in vivo CD20 CAR-T! (#3251)

Even the road to a new age of boundless discovery has to start somewhere, I guess (18/21)