The push to generate biological data for use in training AI models just got much bigger as the US Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, and even Google DeepMind have joined the hype train.
As I reported earlier today, new commitments of approximately $800 million have poured in: the Energy Department is promising $500 million over five years towards lab work, AI modeling, and computation while Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs, and Meta are committing approximately $300 million towards the Virtual Biology Initiative (VBI.)
With $500 million already in the pot from Biohub, which launched the VBI, and data resources from NIH that Biohub said represent the end product of $500 million in previously issued federal funding, the resources going into this project are approaching levels likely not seen since the Human Genome Project.
The addition of US federal agencies adds major weight to the project, which had already signed on numerous privately-funded research institutes and academic consortia. But this time Biohub, itself a privately-funded organization (with direct ties to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg) appears to be driving the train. Whether everybody continues to sit together nicely remains to be seen.
A Biohub spokesperson said that “resulting data is meant to be an open resource for the research community, with Biohub catalyzing the effort to bring organizations together to build the layer that lets datasets work in a unified fashion,” but whether models built with these data will have similarly open access isn’t clear.
Building a virtual cell is a big goal with uncertain timelines and investment requirements. I will be following this story very closely with an eye towards history and how these kinds of Big Science projects can go right or wrong.
Ion Genomics News
Listen this Friday as I go deep into the FDA advisory committee meeting on Grail’s Galleri cancer test with Alex Dickinson, a former Illumina executive who has built a huge following on LinkedIn with his frank takes on the sequencing and cancer testing industries. We’ll discuss how money, power, and politics are clashing with data in the campaign to create a new kind of test: one that may or may not be able to call itself “early detection.” Find it on Apple, Spotify, or www.iongenomics.bio.
Other Genomics News
Stanford University’s Karl Deisseroth has won a share of the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on optogenetics, the technique that uses light to switch individual neurons on and off. Deisseroth shares the award, announced Oct. 5, with German researchers Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg.
Deisseroth’s lab also produced the STARmap 3D spatial transcriptomics method, developed with Xiao Wang, now at the Broad Institute, while she studied under him. Deisseroth cofounded Stellaromics, which is commercializing STARmap.
Also of note: Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute and MIT, known for pioneering research on CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in human cells, worked in Deisseroth’s lab at Stanford early in his career.
Pacific Biosciences, TychoBio Collaborate on Data for AI Models in RNA Therapy Design
Pacific Biosciences and TychoBio, an AI-first drug discovery company, are collaborating to create RNA data to train AI models to be used in designing drugs.
10x Genomics Extends Clinical Research Into Blood Cancers With Fred Hutch Collaboration
10x Genomics announced on Oct. 7 a research collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center to advance the use of single-cell and spatial technologies in both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.
Guardant Study: MRD Test Predicts Melanoma Recurrence After Surgery
Guardant Health’s Guardant Reveal molecular residual disease (MRD) test detected more than 80 percent of melanoma recurrences in prospective study of 48 patients, according to a new study. Often, the test identified recurrence months before it was detected by other methods.
Natera MRD Test Paired With Genentech Drug in New Breast Cancer Treatment De-Escalation Trial
Natera and Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT) have launched a randomized phase III trial testing whether molecular residual disease (MRD) monitoring can determine which patients with intermediate- and high-risk ER-positive/HER2-negative early breast cancer need adjuvant treatment.
Tempus AI to Handle Sample Collection, Sequencing for Moderna-Merck Cancer Vaccine
Tempus AI has announced an expanded, multi-year collaboration to support the commercialization of individualized neoantigen therapy for melanoma being jointly developed by Moderna and Merck.
In the wake of the NHS-Galleri trial, clinical studies for blood-based cancer screening can use late-stage incidence as a surrogate endpoint for mortality, however, “late stage” should be clearly defined for a given cancer type, according to “The Peachtree Consensus” statement produced by a panel of experts convened by the American Cancer Society. As reported by Forest Ray of GenomeWeb, they published their recommendations on early cancer detection and multi-cancer detection trial design Sept. 23 in Cancer. Other important factors to consider are the “timing of screening intervals, the number of screening rounds, and follow‐ups after the last screening round,” Ray wrote.
My Omics Reading List
Cranley, J., Kanemaru, K., Bayraktar, S. et al. “Dynamics of human cardiogenesis and its disruption in trisomy 21.” Nature. Oct. 7, 2026.
Single-cell and spatial experiments helped researchers led by University of Cambridge’s Sarah Teichmann, one of the leaders of the Human Cell Atlas, define 21 distinct tissue niches in the developing heart.
“Comparative profiling revealed that hearts with trisomy 21 are depleted in compact cardiomyocytes and exhibit increased apoptosis relative to euploid hearts,” they wrote, a finding that was validated in experiments using heart cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. “These early developmental perturbations may contribute to the increased risk of congenital heart disease associated with Down syndrome,” they noted.
Elsewhere on Substack
Nava Whiteford teases unearthed details about Tilde Bio a “stealth(ish) nanopore company.” I was going to do my own dive based on this breadcrumb but ran out of time. I still might, but in the meantime, check out his work (paywall.)
