in case you're doubting how brutal the longevity biotech acceleration has been in the first half of 2026
here are a few signals:
- Chai Discovery is reportedly raising $400M at a $3.4B valuation. AI-native biology is starting to command frontier-AI multiples
- Verve Therapeutics triggered a ~$1B acquisition after demonstrating permanent cholesterol reduction via a single gene edit. One treatment. Lifelong effect
- Retro Biosciences dosed the first humans with RTR242. a pill that reactivates the brain's cellular cleanup machinery. Sam Altman's bet on adding 10 healthy years to life. Phase 1 results Q3
- Junevity begins first-in-human trials H2 2026. their platform identified a novel target regulating chronic metabolic dysfunction. a natural GLP-1 alternative with no side effects
- Life Biosciences injected the first ever reverse-aging drug into a human this week. three reprogramming genes delivered directly to aging cells. results by end of 2026
- David Sinclair just announced an oral reprogramming pill entering the $101M XPRIZE. not an injection. a pill you swallow. whole-body biological age reversal
all of these converge in the same 6-month window
this has never happened before in the history of longevity science
the narrative is about to shift permanently
bio/acc
I give it a year until we see a new breed of AI native private equity firms that acquire companies just so they can move their workflows from Claude to open source Chinese models and flip them.
Genetic engineering in human embryos is here.
Today, in a world first, @Columbia and @nucleusgenomics announce high-efficiency editing of human embryos.
The study, led by Dr. Dieter Egli's lab at Columbia University, with Nucleus Genomics’ Dr. Nathan Treff as a senior co-author, achieved editing efficiencies of up to 100% at targeted loci. Simultaneously, we showed no detectable editing-induced chromosomal abnormalities and low off-target activity.
In other words, this is the closest we've come to practical, high-precision gene editing in human embryos.
We are also excited to announce we will be funding and participating in the next phase of this research, alongside Columbia and Dr. Egli.
We see ourselves as a natural pathway for eventually bringing technologies like this into clinical care as part of a broader genetics platform — a full "Genetic Optimization" stack.
@nytimes broke the news in what is a historic moment for Genetic Optimization. See story in thread.
These numbers are shocking. It's like we got a new frontier AI model but for the body.
Lilly's phase 3 results for retatrutide:
> highest dose lost 28.3% of body weight in 80 wks
> 70 lbs ave
> 45% lost 30% or more of their body weight
> 65% on the top dose no longer clinically obese
Retatrutide is more dynamic than semaglutide and tirzepatide because it targets three receptors (GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon), versus one and two, respectively.
Side effects, on the highest dose (12mg), were higher for retatrutide than tirzepatide (nausea and GI), with an 11.3% drop out rate. The lowest 4mg dose still delivered 19% loss with fewer dropouts than placebo.
Pyth Network Suffers Hermes and Core Feed Downtime
Pyth Network reported an outage affecting Pythnet/Hermes, disrupting its core price feeds and sponsored feeds for over four hours. The team said validators are coordinating a restart after identifying the root cause of the issue. The incident may affect DeFi protocols relying on Pyth oracle data for trading, lending, and liquidation operations.
This is a must read on the necessary stack for the agentic economy
“The company that wins it will not look like a model lab. It will look like a market operator: part exchange, part payments network, part identity provider, part trust infrastructure, part governance platform. In other words, less like OpenAI and more like Visa, Moody's, Stripe, Nasdaq, and ServiceNow fused into a single system for software actors.”
solving the oracle problem is one of crypto's grand challenges. right up there with things like the stablecoin trilemma and proof of personhood
today these problems seem near impossible, and maybe they are. but to solve one would mean unlocking a new branch of the tech tree
biotech will do more for humanity in the next 18 months than the last 50 years
here is what the next 12-18 months carry:
1. aging becomes reversible - Life Biosciences reports results from the first ever human epigenetic reprogramming trial by end of 2026. if it works the entire category reprices overnight
2. your genome becomes your medical record-consumer grade sequencing is already at $1,100. by 2027 it is a standard intake form
3. personalized gene therapies become real - baby KJ proved a custom CRISPR therapy can be built for one person in 6 months. his doctors are now building the FDA pathway to do it for everyone
4. peptides go fully mainstream - 14 of 19 banned compounds are coming back to legal compounding. the grey market becomes a regulated industry with actual quality standards
5. psychedelics become first line treatment - Compass Pathways is weeks from the first ever FDA approval of a psychedelic drug. depression and PTSD treatment just changed permanently
6. AI designs drugs that work better than anything a human team has ever produced- Isomorphic Labs is pushing AI-designed molecules into human trials right now. results expected this year
7. BCIs move from medical to performance - Merge Labs, Neuralink, Synchron all pointed at the same target. the first healthy person gets an implant for cognitive enhancement and the waitlist forms immediately after
bio/acc
The future of ultrasound is 3D. Lumius is making it fast, accessible, and intelligent — a universal 3D camera for the body.
Congrats on the launch, @treevoo_lumius and @lichenhang1225!
https://t.co/7IzDsljqrf
"I do not think a chatbot is the right interface for travel or e-commerce." - @bchesky
"I think the future is not apps. The future is agents, but I don't think they're going to be text-forward. I think they're going to be really rich user interfaces."
"Imagine using iMessage to do everything, when in fact every other app has a unique interface."
"With e-commerce, you want a very rich user interface. It would be agentic. You can have a conversation with it, but the point is that it has to be more visual."
$HIMS
THE PEPTIDE SUPPLY CHAIN --- JUST 5 COMPANIES IN CHINA CONTROL ~90% OF THE AMINO ACIDS 🤯
@mansizzzzle: "Before any peptide is produced, you need its API, which stands for 'active pharmaceutical ingredient', and right now China supplies most of the world's API"
"The top 5 companies in China control around 90% of the protected amino acids, which is essentially the raw building block of a peptide."
"You can't attach raw amino acids to each other. That's a very volatile and chaotic process... The error rate tends to compound every time you attach one amino acid to the other. So for example, BPC-157 sits at around 15 amino acids, and it tends to come out correct around 75% of the time. And Semaglutide (Ozempic) sits at 31 amino acids, and that comes out correct around 50% of the time."
"This is why China wins: because they have this at massive scale to compensate for these efficiency issues."
"CordenPharma in Colorado is the largest in the US. They have around 10,000 liter of SPPS reactor capacity."
"But in China there's a company called WuXi AppTec, which has 100,000 liters of capacity... more than 10x larger than *the largest* synthesis plant here in the United States."