Professor Oak

Drug Dev @ A\ | Biopharma Musings | Genetic Medicine & Rare Disease | Buyside Turned Operator | Not Investment Advice

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Surprise 1: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech
.
.
.
Surprise 2: that person is me
Surprise 3: I’m here to tell you all about it

Yes, this is what you think it is; after 6 yrs of increasingly loose anonymity: the Professor Oak reveal post

…and yes, it has gotten so boring around here that I’m literally doxxing myself to spice up the timeline

-------
Ok, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cody Tranbarger. I mostly tweet, but occasionally find time to dabble in drug dev & starting/building biotechs. My past lives span the VC, crossover, startup continuum; Prof Oak has been my way of keeping a digital foot in those worlds, despite having my physical feet planted elsewhere.

The past 18 mo, ‘elsewhere’ was Mithril Medicine, a co. I founded to develop bsAbs for LAMA2-CMD & other ECM-related genetic diseases.

Mithril was born out of hands-on building with @MikeNGladstone, @JasonPaulRhodes, @LifeSciVC, & team @atlasventure. Somehow, I made enough half-decent calls along the way (even a broken clock is right twice a day, eh?) to convince them Mithril/I warranted a small seed. While I can hardly rationalize such an outrageously cavalier bet, I’m grateful for it, & I'd partner with Atlas again in a heartbeat.

In typical AV fashion, Mithril’s primordial form was virtual, decentralized, & ultra-lean. This stage tends to be short-lived, but for Mithril, it worked surprisingly well, for surprisingly long, thanks in part to the rapid maturation of the AI tools I used liberally.

Eventually, Mithril became a bit of an experiment itself - to find the upper bound of how far it could scale as a single operator + a bunch of Claude (+ a stellar bench of part-time consultants).

In parallel, I started spending time with @nc_frey, @an1lam, & @CoefficientBio team; and promptly experienced, for the 1st time, AI at the frontier. Soon thereafter, Mithril stopped looking like an experiment, & started looking like a preview of an entirely new operating model.

From that spark came “Pipeline-in-a-Person.” The idea immediately resonated when we shared it here back in April; and it was central to the shared vision that led to Anthropic’s acquisition of Mithril, & my joining the team.

Why join Anthropic? Three reasons.
(1) For Mithril, the programs continue, with more resources & infrastructure behind them, and as much Claude as I can put to work.

(2) For me, the chance to start several more programs, & find out how many one person can actually run in parallel - an almost unprecedented luxury for a curious drug hunter.

(3) For our mission, a path to institutionalize & scale this new way of working, then put it in the hands of all of biopharma, all over the world - which, candidly, I find the most energizing.

Will AI x Bio cure diseases? Unequivocally yes, imo… but not by the route that gets the most airtime. Rather than timeline acceleration & compression, I see orchestration & parallelization as today's low-hanging fruit.

Most drug hunters see a handful of go/no-go calls in a career, & spend entirely too much of the rest trading emails (my inbox can attest).

Give them the bandwidth to run several programs at once, and the time to focus on scientific judgment, and I’m willing to bet they’ll make better calls. And at scale, better calls translate to more drugs, higher hit rates, broader patient impact, & likely, a disease or 10 or 100 cured. I couldn't be more excited to build toward that future @AnthropicAI.

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to BioTwitter/X. The end of anonymity is bittersweet, but if anyone’s earned a proper introduction, you all have.

It’s difficult to overstate how much this app has done for me: a decade of education, plenty of friends, many job opportunities, several mentors, a few investors, even a co-founder (fmr). It was the generosity of this community that inspired me to start posting 6 years ago, after just as many years lurking. I hope I’ve been able to pay it forward, in my own small way.

But, to be clear, Prof Oak isn’t going anywhere. Same beat, same themes, and now, a front-row seat to drug development at the frontier. Stay tuned for dispatches from the trenches; and remember...

Gotta Cure 'Em All

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Always the “big chungus” chasm that separates the great drugs from the good

[Adu @plainyogurt21]

>be postdoc
>2012 in Cambridge
>join Warp Drive Bio
>plan to mine bacterial genomes
>find macrocycles
>what is a macrocycle
>RAS is undruggable
>everyone says so
>surface is a Death Star
>smooth no pockets
>picomolar grip on GTP
>whole field races the OFF state
>bossman crazy
>says hit the ON state
>the active one
>soil bug makes sanglifehrin
>CypA just sitting in the cell
>free chaperone?
>what if we glue it?
>macrocycle binds CypA
>new surface grabs RAS
>only the GTP bound state
>it clamps
>signal dies
>pure three way complex
>years of wet lab work
>first compound is garbage
>micromolar
>aim only at conserved residues
>swap phenyl for thiazole
>better CypA contact
>potency jumps
>no bioavailability
>unfixable half life
>fix it anyway
>chop the right side to a cyclopropyl
>stick a methylpiperazine on the left
>affinity explodes
>811 daltons
>big chungus
>breaks all rules
>should not be oral
>it is oral
>2018 buyout
>molecule becomes RMC-6236
>early data looks promising
>vp writes the blog post
>doesn't get it
>2023 need cash for phase 3
>EQRx dying with 1.1B in the bank
>buy the company for the cash
>sent CRO our structures to make
>they like
>they steal
>joyo to erasca
>where compound 4a
>comes back as ERAS-0015
>RASolute 302 reads out
>13.2 months
>double chemo SoC
>ASCO plenary
>1 min standing ovation
>presenter angry face
>senator on expanded access
>calls it a miracle drug
>press goes wild
>rash nbd
>dying is worse
>approval August 2026 easy
>198 million in five weeks
>mfw a macrocycle, from a dead startup, funded by a dead company, generational drug

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

RASONQUE's $198M Q3 print, w/ just 5 wks on market, is completely unprecedented amongst oncology drugs, & places it among the fastest launches in industry history $RVMD $XBI

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

@AnthropicAI wet lab is cooking

[Nicholas Perry @ntperry13]

Thrilled to share new work from our experimental biology lab at @AnthropicAI. Led by world-class biochemist Januka Athukoralage, we built a rapid method for the isolation and structural characterization of vaults. It turns out these massive structures are not just found in eukaryotic cells, but also in prokaryotes and even phages. We solve the structure of one of these phage vaults, and then demonstrate we can engineer additional repeats into the wall to make it bigger.

One thing I can't get over about these vaults. They seem to be widespread across life - we assembled them from 8 different bacteria and bacteriophages. But they are just so massive - bigger than ribosomes, AAV, and even some phage capsids. Why devote so much energy to making these huge complexes? They have to be doing something useful - I hope that's the question that gets answered next.

Amazing collaboration with @PeterHYoon, @amirshanehsaz, @eric_kabrams, and @mgdurrant! Grateful to our team for making Claude an amazing labmate and to Anthropic for supporting this type of work on fundamental biology.

Natural mysteries abound - let's get to solving them!

Links here:

Blog: https://t.co/O6VtahFIvo

Technical report: https://t.co/erue23SFWl

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Vaults are so friggin’ cool

(Can’t wait to hang my limited edition L05 vault ornament on the Christmas tree)

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

Read the full preprint here: https://t.co/endRhOCTko

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

May the holidays bring you ~catalysts~

h/t TD Cowen $XBI $BBC

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Immediate pre-order. February can’t come soon enough @JMaraganore

[John Maraganore 🇺🇸🇬🇷🇺🇦 @JMaraganore]

Heads up that “The Importance of Being Unreasonable; Building a Company at the Frontiers of Science and Medicine” is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Thrilled to hear of @JMaraganore’s forthcoming book chronicling the $ALNY story

I remember, early in undergrad, discovering & then devouring the seminal stories in biotech history - Billion-Dollar Molecule, Genentech, Her-2, and so on. Those books profoundly shaped my early path & trajectory. I’m so grateful they were there for me to discover in the first place

I’m certain John’s book will do the same for future generations of biotech leaders… and I’m equally excited to read it myself. Thank you for investing the time & energy, John

[Brad Loncar @bradloncar]

This is a great discussion about the state of drug development. Also, I was excited to hear @JMaraganore mention that he’s writing a book!

[Jason Rhodes @JasonPaulRhodes]

On Mithril, AI, biotech venture capital...a few (more) thoughts.

First, big congratulations again to Cody @Prof_Oak_, who's terrific and keeps hitting it out of the park. He's been a vital colleague at @atlasventure

And big congratulations to @AnthropicAI on the acquisition and bringing Cody on board.

Mithril is a story about an intriguing new pharmacologic mechanism, a virtual team with deep disease biology expertise and killer track records in new therapeutic modalities, and AI for operational efficiency.

If I had to reduce the secret of success to one thing, in biotech and in life more broadly, it would be to surround yourself with great, great people.

Great biotechs pull the right people together for a common purpose, whether employees, consultants, advisors, or at CROs. Our companies have all of them along with all of the people and resources at Atlas that lean in, push, pull, sweat, and strive to build them.

Capital intensity and speed are critical issues in biotech. Anything that reduces the first and increase the latter with rigor is a good thing, including the clever application of AI to orchestrate teams of remarkable, real people.

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Completely agree with @LifeSciVC here. Incrementalism is among the failure modes we think about deeply

Plenty more to come, but you’ll see our team at A\ go to extreme lengths to both pursue novelty ourselves & enable others to do so - an “anti-target crowding” crusade of sorts

[Bruce Booth @LifeSciVC]

The Fruits of AI Drug Abundance: Indigestion In The Near Term

While the long term impact of AI is likely transformational, in the near term more drugs against known targets will likely exacerbate the crowding challenge dragging down industry R&D productivity

https://t.co/ynj0uqZ4MS

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

The @gline x @Prof_Oak_ crossover we all needed

[Nathan C. Frey @nc_frey]

hey! wait! don't go out! it's unsafe! biotech is a woodchipper built to ingest souls and shred them! you need your own pipeline-in-a-person for your protection.

[Andrew Dunn @AndrewE_Dunn]

Come for the update on Anthropic strategy, including their latest thinking on how far they will take these programs (to the brink of human testing)

Stay for the @Prof_Oak_ lore!

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

ANTHROPIC SAYS IT HAS ACQUIRED MITHRIL MEDICINE TO RUN RARE DISEASE PROGRAMS, ADDING THAT IT WANTS TO SHARE ITS MODELS WITH DRUG DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHERS AND AS MANY RESEARCHERS AS POSSIBLE, AND THAT IT LOOKS FORWARD TO WORKING WITH MORE ORGANIZATIONS

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

For now, I’ll leave you with...
Anthropic's blog & partner case studies, including Mithril: https://t.co/nDkHeJ2VwY

Mithril's technical report: https://t.co/bXVyszJeEd

Enjoy

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Surprise 1: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech
.
.
.
Surprise 2: that person is me
Surprise 3: I’m here to tell you all about it

Yes, this is what you think it is; after 6 yrs of increasingly loose anonymity: the Professor Oak reveal post

…and yes, it has gotten so boring around here that I’m literally doxxing myself to spice up the timeline

-------
Ok, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cody Tranbarger. I mostly tweet, but occasionally find time to dabble in drug dev & starting/building biotechs. My past lives span the VC, crossover, startup continuum; Prof Oak has been my way of keeping a digital foot in those worlds, despite having my physical feet planted elsewhere.

The past 18 mo, ‘elsewhere’ was Mithril Medicine, a co. I founded to develop bsAbs for LAMA2-CMD & other ECM-related genetic diseases.

Mithril was born out of hands-on building with @MikeNGladstone, @JasonPaulRhodes, @LifeSciVC, & team @atlasventure. Somehow, I made enough half-decent calls along the way (even a broken clock is right twice a day, eh?) to convince them Mithril/I warranted a small seed. While I can hardly rationalize such an outrageously cavalier bet, I’m grateful for it, & I'd partner with Atlas again in a heartbeat.

In typical AV fashion, Mithril’s primordial form was virtual, decentralized, & ultra-lean. This stage tends to be short-lived, but for Mithril, it worked surprisingly well, for surprisingly long, thanks in part to the rapid maturation of the AI tools I used liberally.

Eventually, Mithril became a bit of an experiment itself - to find the upper bound of how far it could scale as a single operator + a bunch of Claude (+ a stellar bench of part-time consultants).

In parallel, I started spending time with @nc_frey, @an1lam, & @CoefficientBio team; and promptly experienced, for the 1st time, AI at the frontier. Soon thereafter, Mithril stopped looking like an experiment, & started looking like a preview of an entirely new operating model.

From that spark came “Pipeline-in-a-Person.” The idea immediately resonated when we shared it here back in April; and it was central to the shared vision that led to Anthropic’s acquisition of Mithril, & my joining the team.

Why join Anthropic? Three reasons.
(1) For Mithril, the programs continue, with more resources & infrastructure behind them, and as much Claude as I can put to work.

(2) For me, the chance to start several more programs, & find out how many one person can actually run in parallel - an almost unprecedented luxury for a curious drug hunter.

(3) For our mission, a path to institutionalize & scale this new way of working, then put it in the hands of all of biopharma, all over the world - which, candidly, I find the most energizing.

Will AI x Bio cure diseases? Unequivocally yes, imo… but not by the route that gets the most airtime. Rather than timeline acceleration & compression, I see orchestration & parallelization as today's low-hanging fruit.

Most drug hunters see a handful of go/no-go calls in a career, & spend entirely too much of the rest trading emails (my inbox can attest).

Give them the bandwidth to run several programs at once, and the time to focus on scientific judgment, and I’m willing to bet they’ll make better calls. And at scale, better calls translate to more drugs, higher hit rates, broader patient impact, & likely, a disease or 10 or 100 cured. I couldn't be more excited to build toward that future @AnthropicAI.

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to BioTwitter/X. The end of anonymity is bittersweet, but if anyone’s earned a proper introduction, you all have.

It’s difficult to overstate how much this app has done for me: a decade of education, plenty of friends, many job opportunities, several mentors, a few investors, even a co-founder (fmr). It was the generosity of this community that inspired me to start posting 6 years ago, after just as many years lurking. I hope I’ve been able to pay it forward, in my own small way.

But, to be clear, Prof Oak isn’t going anywhere. Same beat, same themes, and now, a front-row seat to drug development at the frontier. Stay tuned for dispatches from the trenches; and remember...

Gotta Cure 'Em All

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Great exemplar for the ideal mAb co-formulation use case: (i) orthogonal, clearly additive biological axes; (ii) much harder for a bsAb to consistently saturate individual pharmacology of one soluble & one membrane-bound target simultaneously $ABBV $SYRE

[Alejandro Hernández Camba @alehndezc]

🔬 TARGET-CD: Dual targeting may offer additional benefit!

Endoscopic remission at Week 24:
🟠 ABBV-466: 40.5%
🟣 Risankizumab: 22.4%
🟢 Trosunilimab: 20.0%

Promising Phase 2a data, but larger trials are needed to confirm durability and safety.

#UEGWeek2026 #IBD @my_ueg

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

No view on where $BBTX sits in the sea of Chinese I&I bsAbs, but gotta h/t Shanshan for playing the game masterfully

Still owns 21.5% pre-IPO. ~$480M post, >$130M invested. From the Seed, 2.5x in 3 mo, 2.4x in 6 mo., 2.1x in 8 mo.

Biggest Founder-CEO stake in biotech IPO since 2022

[Alex Kesin @alexkesin]

Going to get this quote framed and hang it up in my apartment like one of those Live Laugh Love signs

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

When genome editing got going, the ability to trace a mammalian embryo's development to organ generation in exquisite detail was not envisioned. Now it's been accomplished by 2 independent groups. A big week in developmental biology
https://t.co/jLY8W8rrwM @JShendure @ScienceMagazine

https://t.co/1oPAmqS7H8 @jonathanweisman @CellCellPress

https://t.co/7ssbeKsULb @nature @ewencallaway

[Convoke @Convokebio]

We benchmarked the comprehensiveness of our free pipeline database against a leading paid incumbent database -- our asset coverage is 28% higher overall. If you're paying for a pipeline database and not happy with the data quality try ours out at https://t.co/52E9DxJyW0