Find here a listing of the latest industry news in genomics, genetics, precision medicine, and beyond. We will update and add to this page on a regular basis. This page is not a compilation of all relevant information but rather contains some key highlights that we consider to be of importance to share with the community.

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News for the month November 2025

Funding / IPO

• $100 Million Grant Awarded for the Prevention of Infectious Disease Outbreaks
• Skeletalis Raises $8M for Osteoporosis Treatment (longevity)
• Flipping the script: Scripta Therapeutics raises $12M to find disease-modifying drugs that alter transcription factor activity

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Veteran biotech executive sees a wave of M&A coming — and a commercial future for gene editing
• **Tempus Scoops Up OneOme’s Pharmacogenetics Assets as Precision Medicine Shakeout Continues
• **Abbott to acquire Exact Sciences

Stock / Quarterly Results

• Bio-Rad shares drop despite earnings beat in third quarter
• Caris Life Sciences Reports Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results and Increases 2025 Revenue Guidance
  • Revenue growth of 113% driven by strong performance in molecular profiling services
  • Raises 2025 revenue guidance to $720 to $730 million, representing year-over-year growth of 75-77%
• GRAIL Reports Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results
  • Q3 U.S. Galleri Revenue Grew 28% Year-Over-Year to $32.6 Million
  • Q3 Galleri Tests Sold Grew 39% Year-Over-Year to More Than 45,000
  • Galleri PMA Submission to FDA Now Anticipated in Q126
  • Cash Position of More Than $850 Million Includes Recently Completed Private Placement

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• Integrated DNA Technologies and Beckman Coulter Life Sciences Partner to Advance Cancer Research Through Automated NGS Workflows
• Pillar Biosciences Enables Rapid, Localized Tumor Profiling of Lymphoid Malignancies with Launch of New Kitted NGS Panel
• Volta Labs and New England Biolabs Partner to Expand Automated NGS Library Preparation on the Callisto Platform
• Volta Labs Delivers the Ultimate Whole Genome Sequencing Sample Prep Launch: Callisto™ Now Unifies the Entire WGS Ecosystem on One Platform
• Illumina® Protein Prep delivers groundbreaking precision in NGS proteomics for more than 40 customers, ranging from academic institutions to large national biobanks

Precision Medicine

• GEMMABio Announces Clinical Trial Authorization for New SMA1 Gene Therapy
• ToolGen and GenEditBio Enter Strategic Cross-License Agreement to Accelerate Development of Innovative Genome-Editing Therapeutics
• A bowhead whale’s DNA offers clues to fight cancer
• MGI Tech Joins Forces with SAMRC and DSTI to Launch South Africa’s 110K Human Genome Program and Unveil Africa’s First DNBSEQ-T7, Ushering a New Era in African Genomics
• MyOme Launches Proactive Health Network — A First-of-Its-Kind National Platform for Concierge & Executive Health Clinics Powered by Whole-Genome Precision
• GenomOncology Partners with Glioblastoma Foundation to Accelerate Precision Glioblastoma Brain Cancer Treatment
• Baylor Genetics Applauds Medi-Cal’s Decision to Cover Whole Genome Sequencing Decision brings total number of Medicaid programs offering WGS coverage to 30 states and Puerto Rico

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data, Knowledge Graph, EHR

• UK Biobank released the final set of data on nearly 250 metabolites – the molecules in our blood produced by our bodies as we go about our lives – in half a million volunteers

Longevity, Health Span, and Life Expectancy

• A bowhead whale’s DNA offers clues to fight cancer

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Clairity, Myriad Genetics, and MagView Launch the First Integrated AI and Genetic Risk Platform for Personalized Breast Health
• **What a Difference a Year Makes: Diagnostics Deal-Making Roars Back After two years of stagnation, 2025 has shattered records in diagnostics deal-making. Last week’s acquisition of Exact Sciences by Abbott for a total value of $23B marks the largest transaction in in vitro diagnostics history. Add to that the BD/Waters merger and TPG/Blackstone’s take-private of Hologic, and this year’s mega-deals (almost) surpass the combined total of the past decade. What changed? And what does this mean for the future of diagnostics and precision medicine? This article by Health Advances dives into this in more details.
• **Freenome Announces Exclusive Agreement with Roche to Expand Technology Collaboration and Develop and Commercialize Cancer Screening Tests Outside the U.S.
• Baylor Genetics Launches Pharmacogenomic and Germline Genetic Testing for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
• Geneseeq Receives NMPA Approval for PanTRKare™ – China’s First NGS-Based Pan-Solid Tumor Companion Diagnostic Kit for NTRK Gene Fusions
• MyOme Launches Proactive Health Network — A National Platform for Concierge & Executive Health Clinics Powered by Whole-Genome Precision

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT/Agentic AI

• Empathetic, Available, Cheap: When A.I. Offers What Doctors Don’t In dozens of interviews with The New York Times, Americans described using chatbots to try to compensate for the health system’s shortcomings.
• OpenAI considers consumer health tools in push beyond core AI offerings, Business Insider reports
• **Insilico and Lilly enter a research and licensing collaboration to advance AI-driven drug discovery

Miscellaneous

• **Novo Nordisk Alzheimer’s drug trials fail in blow to weight-loss giant
• Oracle and Ci4CC Partner to Accelerate Oncology Innovation
• AbbVie cuts ties with Google-backed longevity company, lays off scientists AbbVie is ending a decade-long partnership with Calico Life Sciences, an Alphabet-funded biotech company focused on aging research, and laying off chemists working on discovering new drugs (longevity)
• Exceptional Ventures’ Matt Cooper on why wellness must evolve from hype to evidence to truly succeed
• **James D. Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97
• Biotech’s Breakthrough Awards announced Includes Resonant, Elegen, The DNA Company, Dovetail Genomics, intoDAN, Steallaromics, and Ultima Genomics

Publications

• Thermodynamic principles link in vitro transcription factor affinities to single-molecule chromatin states in cells
• **Genome-wide association study of delay discounting identifies 11 loci and reveals transdiagnostic associations across mental and physical health Study identified 11 genetic regions linked to delay discounting – the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones – shedding new light on how impulsive decision-making relates to both mental and physical health.
• **Long-read metagenomics reveals phage dynamics in the human gut microbiome Researchers have discovered new regions of the human genome particularly vulnerable to mutations. These altered stretches of DNA can be passed down to future generations and are important for how we study genetics and disease. 
• **Transcription start sites experience a high influx of heritable variants fueled by early development
• Reversing lysosomal dysfunction restores youthful state in aged hematopoietic stem cells (longevity)
• **Transcription factors instruct DNA methylation patterns in plant reproductive tissues Study used plant cells to discover that a type of epigenetic tag, called DNA methylation, can be regulated by genetic mechanisms.
• Proteome-wide model for human disease genetics
• CUT&Tag overcomes biases of ChIP and establishes chromatin patterns for repetitive genomic loci
• African-ancestry-specific variant IKKβ p.Glu502Lys confers high lupus risk
• Six Drivers of Aging Identified Among Genes DifferentiallyExpressed With Age
• **Drugmakers share data to feed voracious foundation models
• **Specificity, length and luck drive gene rankings in association studies The two main approaches for discovering disease genes reveal distinct aspects of biology, a new study shows. While both methods are widely used, the research found that they identify different genes, with major implications for drug development.
• **Estimation and mapping of the missing heritability of human phenotypes Whole genome sequencing reveals how much human heritability we can finally explain
• Evidence for improved DNA repair in long-lived bowhead whale

News for the month October 2025

October 2025: Capital Returns, AI Accelerates, and Precision Medicine Re-Emerges as Biotech’s Core Engine

Funding and Market Momentum

Investment activity surged across diagnostics, precision medicine, and AI-driven health platforms. Highlights included OpenEvidence’s $200 M raise at a $3.5 B valuation for its “ChatGPT for Medicine,” Grail’s $325 M private placement, and Curve Biosciences’ $40 M round to advance whole-body chronic-disease monitoring. Additional financings spanned women’s health (Cyclana Bio, Midi Health), oncology (Trogenix $95 M), and next-generation diagnostics (BillionToOne IPO filing, Kihealth diabetes diagnostic). The pace signals renewed investor confidence and a reopening of late-stage biotech capital markets.

AI & Data Infrastructure Transformation

A wave of AI announcements underscored medicine’s deep pivot toward intelligent automation. Lilly unveiled the world’s largest NVIDIA Blackwell-powered AI factory for drug discovery; Verily, Invert, and Microsoft each expanded AI-assistant or agentic-AI offerings for clinicians and bioprocess teams. Start-ups such as Peer AI, Attuned Intelligence, and Datamonk are re-architecting clinical workflows and regulatory pathways through supervised and agentic AI, pushing toward faster decisions and reduced administrative burden.

Genomics, Precision Medicine & Scientific Breakthroughs

Omics and population-scale genomics remained hotbeds of discovery. Helix, King Faisal Specialist Hospital, and Genomics’ Mystra platform showcased how genome sequencing and AI are converging to transform newborn screening, drug discovery, and clinical trial matching. Landmark studies mapped human metabolism at unprecedented depth and demonstrated how whole-genome data linked to mortality statistics can refine breast-cancer care for over 15 k patients annually. These advances reinforce the twin accelerators of today’s biotech landscape, capital plus computation, fueling a new era of precision, evidence-led medicine.

Funding / IPO

• **Curve Biosciences Raises $40 Million to Bring Whole-Body Intelligence to Chronic Disease Monitoring (longevity)
• **OpenEvidence Raises $200 Million at $3.5 Billion Valuation for a ChatGPT for Medicine The three-year-old artificial intelligence start-up has drawn investor attention, and money, as its use among doctors, nurses and others skyrockets. OpenEvidence is the fastest-growing application for physicians in history.
• **GRAIL, Inc. Announces $325.0 Million Private Placement Financing
• Cyclana Bio Raises £5M to Advance Drug Discovery for Endometriosis (Women’s Health)
• Fourier Health Announces $8.4M Funding Round to Modernize Clinical Care Intake and Unstructured Data Processing with AI
• **Molecular diagnostics firm BillionToOne files for US IPO
• Attuned Intelligence Raises $13M to Transform Hospital Call Centers with Supervised AI
• Peer AI Raises $12.1 Million to Accelerate Drug Approvals with an Intelligent Regulatory Workflow
• Datamonk Raises $1.9M Pre-Seed to Accelerate Medical Imaging Data Migrations with Agentic AI
• Female-led Sensi.AI gets $45M to accelerate AI-driven care intelligence for ageing populations
• Trogenix announces £70 million / $95 million Series A financing to drive clinical development of potentially curative therapies for aggressive cancers
• Kihealth Raises $5M in Oversubscribed Seed Round to Launch First-of-Its-Kind Diabetes Diagnostic
• Igyxos Biotherapeutics Awarded EUR 5.7 Million from the French Government to Accelerate Development of its First-in-class Monoclonal Antibody for the Treatment of Infertility
• Midi Health Raises $50M Series C for Menopause Care Platform

Mergers & Acquisitions

• The Jackson Laboratory acquires New York Stem Cell Foundation to transform biomedical research and accelerate precision therapies for patients
• TransCode Therapeutics (RNAZ) announces the acquisition of Polynoma and a $25 Million strategic financing by a subsidiary of CK Life Sciences to form a first-in-class unique immuno-oncology and metastatic prevention oncology company
• PureHealth completes EUR 800 million acquisition of Hellenic Healthcare Group, strengthening its global platform

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• Nabsys Presents Data Detailing OhmX™ Platform’s Unique Advantages of Genome Mapping (ASHG)
• BD and Opentrons Collaborate to Accelerate Single-Cell Multiomics Discoveries with Robotic Automation

Precision Medicine

• Helix to Present New Population-Scale Genomic Research (ASHG)
• King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre Joins BeginNGS® Consortium to Advance Newborn Screening by Genome Sequencing in the Region

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• A.D.A.M. Innovations and SOPHiA GENETICS partner to advance liquid biopsy testing and companion diagnostics for precision oncology in Japan

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT/Agentic AI

• **Lilly Deploys World’s Largest, Most Powerful AI Factory for Drug Discovery Using NVIDIA Blackwell-Based DGX SuperPOD
• AI Pulse: Microsoft rolls out updated ‘Copilot for health’ feature; athenahealth embeds agentic AI into athenaOne platform
• **Invert launches Invert Assist, an AI-powered analysis interface built for bioprocess
• **Verily rolls out consumer app for free health guidance, AI agent
• Coalition for Health AI faces escalating attacks by Trump officials, loss of founding member Amazon
• Genomics launches Mystra: the world’s first and original AI-enabled human genetics platform, now available to transform drug target discovery and clinical development (ASHG)
• Use of Ambient AI Scribes to Reduce Administrative Burden and Professional Burnout

Miscellaneous

• Hinge Health and Omada broke the digital health IPO dry spell. The CEOs share their exit strategies (HLT25)
• Epic to end startup codevelopment program
• HLTH25 in Las Vegas – News roundup (HLT25)
  • Baylor using Oracle AI to predict development of alcohol-related liver disease
  • Atropos Health launches ‘Evidence Agent’ for automated clinical insights
  • Optum unveils new AI-powered claims processing platform
• **Trump Administration quietly went live with the TrumpRx.gov website – the program will officially launch in early 2026
• Cleveland Clinic partners to invest in and create health tech companies Cleveland Clinic and Silicon Valley investor Khosla Ventures are collaborating to provide a direct health system pipeline to emerging technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, digital health and next-generation therapeutics.
• Atropos Health Launches the Atropos Evidence™ Agent at Stanford Health Care and Collaborates with Microsoft to Improve Evidence-Based Personalized Medicine at the Point of Care

Publications

• The functional landscape of coding variation in the familial hypercholesterolemia gene LDLR
• An African ancestry-specific nonsense variant in CD36 is associated with a higher risk of dilated cardiomyopathy
• A study of RNA splicing and protein expression in the living human brain Study findings challenge the longstanding assumption that postmortem tissue accurately represents the living brain — and can reshape the future of research and drug development for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases
• Organism-Specific Sequence Motifs Link Ribosomal RNAs to Brain Disorders Study identifies that ribosomal RNA found to share unique motifs with nervous system genes
• Advancements in Whole-Genome Sequencing Protocols: A Decade of In-House Operations and Quality Controls at the Tohoku Medical Megabank
• **From genotype to phenotype with 1,086 near telomere-to-telomere yeast genomes
• **Genome-wide association studies of lifetime and frequency of cannabis use in 131,895 individuals Genetic study links cannabis use to psychiatric, cognitive and physical health
• **Clinical potential of whole-genome data linked to mortality statistics in patients with breast cancer in the UK: a retrospective analysis Whole genome sequencing offered to breast cancer patients is likely to identify unique genetic features that could either guide immediate treatment or help match patients to clinical trials for over 15,000 women a year.
• Improved allele frequencies in gnomAD through local ancestry inference Researchers at Texas Children’s Neurological Research Institute (NRI) and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new tool within the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) to sharpen the accuracy of genetic testing.
• **A genetic map of human metabolism across the allele frequency spectrum Study created the largest genetic map of human metabolism, revealing new insights on the role of metabolites in health and disease and creating a blueprint for further research.
• Feasibility, acceptability and clinical outcomes of the BabyScreen+ genomic newborn screening study Study explored the feasibility of incorporating WGS into NBS for 1,000 Australian infants. While standard screening identified hypothyroidism biochemically in one infant, incorporating WGS clarified the genetic cause in that case and increased this number to 16 high-chance findings, allowing parents and healthcare providers to modify care accordingly. 
• Genetic modifiers and ascertainment drive variable expressivity of complex disorders
• Precision cardiovascular medicine: shifting the innovation paradigm

News for the month September 2025

September 2025 brought a rush of funding, bold AI moves, and scientific insights that are reshaping biotech and health tech. On the capital front, Enhanced Genomics extended its Series A to $19M, while Synthesize Bio launched with a $10M seed to accelerate generative genomics. In M&A, SeqOne acquired Congenica and Genmab pays $8B to buy Merus.

The battle for AI dominance accelerated. Oracle and OpenAI announced a $300B cloud deal, paired with Oracle’s rollout of AI tools for patient portals that let patients query diagnoses and lab results in plain language. Meanwhile, Lilly launched TuneLab, opening $1B+ in drug discovery models to startups, and unveiled a novel “data-for-AI” exchange, giving free model access in return for datasets.

Broader news also stood out. Perimenopause emerged as the new women’s health frontier, reflecting a shift in focus beyond menopause. Luke Miels was appointed CEO designate of GSK, Element Biosciences files Competition and Patent Infringement Countersuits against Illumina, while researchers welcomed Anthony Letai as Trump’s new NCI director and the future of our universities is reshaping.

In science, a Q&A with Francis Collins revisited the Human GenomeProject and the future of NIH, Stephen Kingsmore spotlighted genomic medicine in the neonatal ICU, while Huntington’s disease was successfully treated for the first time. Longevity research delivered breakthroughs: a multiomics blueprint of a 117-year-old, circadian rhythm digital phenotyping as a biomarker for aging, and new links between gut fungi, genetics, and disease risk.

Funding / IPO

• **Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint raises star-studded $60m funding round (longevity)
• FYR Bio Secures $8 Million to Advance Blood-Based Biomarkers for Brain Cancer and Neurodegeneration
• **Sanofi Pumps $625M Into Venture Arm to Back Breakthroughs in Early-Stage Startups
• Rapidemic Receives $2.7M Gates Foundation Grant to Advance STI Diagnostics
• Trially AI Seed Round Secures $4.7M and Launches “Margo” to Solve Clinical Trial Recruitment Bottleneck
• Sophont, Founded by 22-Year-Old Innovator, Raises $9.22M Seed Round to Transform Healthcare with Multimodal AI
• Diana Health Raises $55 Million Series C to Transform Women’s Health in Partnership with Hospitals and Appoints Dr. Neel Shah to its Board of Directors
• **Enhanced Genomics Extends Series A Funding to USD $19 Million to Drive Development of Therapeutics Pipeline
• **Synthesize Bio Launches with $10M Seed Round to Accelerate Generative Genomics
• Lōvu Health Raises $8M Series A for Its AI-Powered Maternal Health Platform
• Ketryx Raises $39M Series B Round to Power the Future of Regulated Artificial Intelligence for Life Sciences
• Predoc lands $30M to scale health information platform

Mergers & Acquisitions

• **Genmab pays $8B to buy Merus and its phase 3 bispecific that wowed analysts
• Innovaccer Acquires Story Health to Pioneer AI Agents that Augment Specialty Care Teams
• Precision Cell Systems Completes Two Acquisitions to Consolidate Best-in-Class Technologies Serving 700+ Customers for Cell Analysis
• **SeqOne Acquires Congenica to Create a Global Leader in AI-Powered Genomic Medicine

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• **Element Biosciences Files Competition and Patent Infringement Countersuits Against Illumina

Precision Medicine

• **Q&A: Francis Collins on the Human Genome Project, Precision Medicine, and the Future of NIH
• Clinical Long-Read WGS Challenges, Abilities Highlighted in New Study
• **Genomic Revolution in the Neonatal ICU: Interview with Stephen Kingsmore

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Genomenon announced a strategic partnership with Compass Bioinformatics, integrating Genomenon’s Mastermind FLEX Data into Compass Bioinformatic’s innovative InheriNext platform 
• Tempus Receives U.S. FDA 510(k) Clearance for Tempus xR IVD, its RNA NGS In Vitro Diagnostic Device
• Golden Helix and Genomenon Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance Clinical Diagnostics
• SOPHiA GENETICS and Jessa Ziekenhuis Announce Precision Oncology Partnership
• GeneDx releases GeneDx Infinity™, a rare disease dataset, to accelerate diagnosis and fuel drug discovery. It serves as the foundation for rare disease insights and powers GeneDx’s ExomeDx and GenomeDx
• Myriad Genetics and SOPHiA GENETICS to Develop an Innovative Companion Diagnostic Offering in Liquid Biopsy
• Myriad’s Next Chapter: New CEO Sam Raha on Growth, AI, and MRD Testing CEO of Myriad Genetics, Sam Raha joined Mendelspod for an interview

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data, Knowledge Graph, EHR

• **In first-of-its-kind setup, Lilly offers startups free access to its AI models in exchange for data
• **Epic Launches Comet: A New AI Platform to Predict Patient Health Journeys

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT/Agentic AI

• **Oracle to roll out AI features in patient portal Patients can query the AI for plain-language explanations of diagnoses or lab results, as well as prepare for upcoming doctor visits and draft messages to providers
• Oracle highlights new AI tools for hospitals, takes aim at Epic
• 5 concerns raised during House hearing on health AI
• **Oracle, OpenAI Sign $300 Billion Cloud Deal
• **Lilly launches TuneLab platform to give biotechnology companies access to AI-enabled drug discovery models built through over $1 billion in research investment

Women’s Health

• **Perimenopause is the new buzzword in the business of women’s health The menopause market has proved so successful that companies are increasingly pushing products aimed at younger women too
• JAMA Launches Dedicated Women’s Health Channel to Address Research and Evidence Gaps

Longevity, Health Span, and Life Expectancy

• Former Leaders of Thorne HealthTech and Tempus Launch Brain Health and Wellness Company BEVIMI at Inaugural CG Well Summit
• Stanford AI course to democratize participation in longevity science

Miscellaneous

• **President announces TrumpRx website for drugs, and pricing deal with Pfizer
• **Luke Miels appointed CEO designate for GSK
• Here’s What Trump’s $100K Visa Plan Means for Healthcare
• **Researchers are relieved at Trump’s likely pick for National Cancer Institute Harvard physician-scientist Anthony Letai is poised to head world’s largest cancer research agency
• NIH launches $50M Autism Data Science Initiative to unlock causes and improve outcomes
• The Truth About Tylenol and Autism — YouTube’s Dr. Mike deep dives on the recent press conference
• LabCorp, Natera Settled Cancer-Test Patent Row Mid-Trial
• Hospitals, doctors could lose $32B in revenue next year if ACA (Affordable Care Act) subsidies expire: report
• AstraZeneca launches DTC platform amid US pricing pressures
• BMS plots another DTC platform, this one offering Sotyktu at 86% discount to cash-pay patients
• Direct-to-patient programs are in the works at 94% of pharmas, set to become ‘standard practice’: survey
• **The future of universities A Nature magazine special issue, focusing on the future of our universities.
• **Alzheimer’s Drugs Are Finally Tackling the Disease Itself. Here’s How While our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease is far from complete, the latest therapies, and others in more than 100 clinical trials, offer new hope – in the Innovations section in journal Nature
• FDA rescinds LDT final rule Regulation of lab developed tests returns to its status before the agency attempted to expand its jurisdiction and industry groups sued to stop it
• Epic must face claims it used monopoly power to harm rival Particle Health’s business, judge rules
• Trump Executive Action Cracks Down on Pharmaceutical Ads
• Whoop Is Bringing Clinical Blood Testing to Its App
• Amazon ropes in Fay to offer dietitian services on telehealth platform
• **Apple introduces smartwatch feature designed to detect high blood pressure
• CMS opens state applications for $50B Rural Health Transformation Program

Publications

• Treatment of a severe vascular disease using a bespoke CRISPR–Cas9 base editor in mice
• Alcohol use and risk of dementia in diverse populations: evidence from cohort, case–control and Mendelian randomization approaches Study suggests that drinking any amount of alcohol likely increases dementia risk
• The Gut Microbiome and Epigenomic Reprogramming: Mechanisms, Interactions, and Implications for Human Health and Disease
• **Alzheimer’s Drugs Are Finally Tackling the Disease Itself. Here’s How
• **The multiomics blueprint of the individual with the most extreme lifespan Study explains how genetics and lifestyle combined to keep a 117-year-old healthy: a convergence of protective genetic variants, resilient immune function, efficient metabolism, robust mitochondrial performance, a favorable gut microbiome, and stable epigenetic regulation, collectively preserving the health into extreme old age.
• **Longitudinal Digital Phenotyping of Circadian Rest-Activity Rhythms via Wearables as Biomarkers for Late-Life Function, Cognition, and Neuropsychiatric Health Study demonstrates that older adults with weakening or disrupted circadian rest-activity rhythms face accelerated functional and cognitive decline, while improvements in rhythmicity are linked to stabilization, positioning circadian patterns as both an early biomarker of vulnerability and a modifiable target for healthy aging.(longevity, life expectancy, health span)
• Adoption of Health Information Technologies by Area Socioeconomic Deprivation Among US Hospitals
• **Gut fungi are associated with human genetic variation and disease risk Study finds links between human genetic variation, gut mycobiome, and chronic disease risk

News for the month August 2025

Funding / IPO

• **Gene Therapy Specialist Kriya Raises $313M
• Citizen Health secures $30M for personalized patient advocate
• Biotech Startup Tahoe Therapeutics Raised $30 Million To Build AI Models Of Living Cells
• Digital twin startup Twin Health secures $53M, nears $1B valuation
• Arintra scores $21M for medical coding platform

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Kite to Acquire Interius BioTherapeutics for $350M to Advance In Vivo Platform
• **Tempus Announces the Acquisition of Paige
• Xoma goes shopping for struggling biotechs, picking up HilleVax and Lava
• **10x Genomics to Acquire Scale Biosciences

Stock

• Illumina Reports Financial Results for Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue of $1.06 billion for Q2 2025, down 3% from Q2 2024 on both a reported and constant currency basis
• 10x Genomics Reports Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results Revenue was $172.9 million for the second quarter of 2025. Excluding $27.3 million related to a patent litigation settlement, revenue was $145.6 million, a 5% decrease from the corresponding period of 2024, primarily driven by a decrease in instrument revenue. This figure also reflects approximately $4.0 million of revenue that resulted from customers in China accelerating purchases from the third quarter into the second quarter in anticipation of potential tariff changes. 
• Lilly reports second-quarter 2025 financial results and raises guidance In Q2 2025, worldwide revenue was $15.56 billion, an increase of 38% compared with Q2 2024, driven by a 42% increase in volume, partially offset by a 6% decrease due to lower realized prices. Key Products¹ revenue grew to $10.40 billion in Q2 2025, led by Zepbound and Mounjaro.

Precision Medicine

• **Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time
• FDA pushes back PDUFA date for Regenxbio’s Hunter syndrome gene therapy
• Insulin resistance prediction from wearables and routine blood biomarkers
• SOPHiA GENETICS expands collaboration with AstraZeneca using AI to improve breast cancer patient outcomes
• Standard BioTools and Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE-SG100K) Launch Proteomics Collaboration, Selecting SomaScan to Power Large-Scale Population Health Study

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Freenome Announces Exclusive License Agreement with Exact Sciences to Commercialize Freenome’s Blood-Based Screening Test for Colorectal Cancer
• Helix and Veracyte Partner to Expand Access to Clinically Actionable Genomic Insights in Prostate Cancer Care

Longevity, Health Span, and Life Expectancy

• The Psychological Secret to Longevity
• The One Quality Most ‘Super-Agers’ Share After 25 years of research, scientists have found that the one trait most “super-agers” — people over 80 with the memory of someone decades younger — share is a strong emphasis on social relationships, often paired with extroverted personalities. Social engagement may help preserve brain volume and function, though genetics and biology likely play an equally important role in their exceptional cognitive health (see the publication The first 25 years of the Northwestern University SuperAging Program)
• Genomics pioneer George Church earns first retraction for anti-aging gene therapy paper

Genome Research

• **Google releases highly accurate genome polishing with DeepPolisher: Enhancing the foundation of genomic research DeepPolisher, is a new deep learning tool that significantly improves the accuracy of genome assemblies by precisely correcting base-level errors, which recently played a key role in enhancing the Human Pangenome Reference.
• **DeepPolisher on GitHub DeepPolisher is a transformer-based sequencing correction method similar to DeepConsensus. DeepPolisher is designed to identify errors in genome assemblies. DeepPolisher takes haplotype-specific reads aligned to phased assemblies and produces a VCF file containing potential errors in the assembly. Currently, DeepPolisher can take PacBio HiFi-based assemblies and read alignments to identify potential errors.

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT/Agentic AI

• **Oracle Health debuts AI-powered EHR designed as a ‘voice-first’ solution embedded with agentic AI
• As AI spreads through health care, is the technology degrading providers’ skills? New study suggests that, after having a specialized tool taken away, clinicians were less proficient at colonoscopies
• Google announces new AI-powered personal health and fitness coach for Fitbit
• AI and Digital Health: Personalizing Physical Activity to Improve Population Health An opinion piece that explores the belief that AI can make a significant impact on health by helping humans increase their physical activity
• The 99.3% Problem Why China’s World-Class Medical AI Isn’t Actually Being Used
• **Epic takes notes Epic is expected to announce new technology this month that automatically transcribes doctors’ notes during patient visits, according to two doctors, a health industry group representative and a venture capitalist with knowledge of the announcement
• Epic unveils MyChart Central to link disparate patient portals
• Epic’s AI overhaul promises to address EHR headaches for clinicians and patients
• Avo and MEDITECH Partner to Integrate AI Scribe into Expanse EHR

Miscellaneous

• What Happens When an Entire Generation of Scientists Changes Its Mind
• **We’re Heading Toward A COVID Surge — Here’s When It’s Predicted To Peak It’s hard to predict COVID infections, but rates are high and growing throughout the country with a predicted peak in early September
• White House data sharing plan boasts big ambitions, but has scant details Improving health data exchange is a worthy goal, but the initiative has to overcome challenges like data security, under-resourced providers and slow technology uptake, experts say.
• We’re Heading Toward A COVID Surge — Here’s When It’s Predicted To Peak
• **Scientists capture first footage of human embryo implanting in a uterus – read the full Nature article
• Why direct-to-consumer sales are unlikely to significantly lower drug costs With Trump’s backing, the pharma industry is expanding the model, but experts expect its impact to be limited
• “Electrical Genotyping” Simplifies the Detection of DNA Mutations Microfluidic chip uses impedance instead of a biological readout
• **NIH director lays out agency’s research and funding priorities in new strategy statement
• Trump Plan for Tariffs on Imported Drugs Draws Criticism on All Sides The tariffs would “put affordability and access at risk,” one expert says
• Lilly’s oral GLP-1, orforglipron, delivers weight loss of up to an average of 27.3 lbs in first of two pivotal Phase 3 trials in adults with obesity

Publications

• **Potentiation of mitochondrial function by mitoDREADD-G_s reverses pharmacological and neurodegenerative cognitive impairment in mice Scientists Reverse Dementia-Like Memory Loss in Mice by Supercharging Brain Cells
• **Rewriting destiny—gene-hacked stem cells ignite a revolution against aging
• **An ancient enhancer rapidly evolving in the human lineage promotes neural development and cognitive flexibility Scientists may have found the tiny DNA switch that made us human
• **Human microglia show unique transcriptional changes in Alzheimer’s disease Brain Autopsies Revealed a Potential Culprit Behind Alzheimer’s
• **Watch a human embryo implant itself — with brute force Video provides an up-close look at a human embryo plunging into tissue that simulates the uterine lining.
• Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study
• Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity
• Breakthrough lung cancer treatment supercharges immune cells with mitochondria Scientists have found a way to supercharge lung cancer treatment by transplanting healthy mitochondria into tumors, which both boosts immune response and makes chemotherapy far more effective. By combining this novel method with cisplatin, researchers reversed harmful tumor metabolism and empowered immune cells to fight back, all without added toxicity.
• Large-scale wearable data reveal spatiotemporal organization of annual sleep patterns
• The first 25 years of the Northwestern University SuperAging Program
• **A streamlined CRISPR-based test for tuberculosis detection directly from sputum
• **Whole-exome sequencing analysis identifies risk genes for schizophrenia This large-scale exome sequencing study of nearly 29,000 schizophrenia cases reveals new rare coding variant associations in STAG1 and ZNF136 at exome-wide significance. Six additional genes, including SLC6A1 and KLC1, also show strong associations. Several implicated genes overlap with other psychiatric and developmental disorders, highlighting disrupted chromatin organization as a potential key factor in schizophrenia’s neurobiology.
• Layer-specific changes in sensory cortex across the lifespan in mice and humans
• Targeted delivery of diverse biomolecules with engineered bacterial nanosyringes
• AI-driven fusion of multimodal data for Alzheimer’s disease biomarker assessment
• **Whole-genome sequencing of 490,640 UK Biobank participants Reports on whole-genome sequencing of 490,640 UK Biobank participants, building on previous genotyping effort
• Mitochondrial damage triggers the concerted degradation of negative regulators of neuronal autophagy
• **Large-scale genome-wide analyses with proteomics integration reveal novel loci and biological insights into frailty
• RNA N-glycosylation enables immune evasion and homeostatic efferocytosis Study demonstrates that sugarcoating hides cellular RNA from the immune system
• Parent-of-origin effects on complex traits in up to 236,781 individuals This study uncovers widespread parent-of-origin effects on complex traits by inferring parental allele origin without parental genomes, offering strong support for the parental conflict hypothesis and revealing a significant but underexplored layer of genetic influence.
• ShortStop: a machine learning framework for microprotein discovery The newly developed computational tool ShortStop distinguishes functional microproteins from non-functional smORFs by leveraging machine learning and biochemical features. It accurately classifies smORFs into Swiss-Prot-like or non-functional categories, enabling scalable microprotein discovery. Applied to genomic and clinical datasets, ShortStop uncovered novel, biologically relevant microproteins overlooked by other methods.
• A streamlined CRISPR-based test for tuberculosis detection directly from sputum

News for the month July 2025

July 2025 marked a transformative month in biotech and digital health, with major funding rounds underscoring AI’s accelerating role in healthcare. Open Evidence secured a massive $210M to expand its AI copilot platform for physicians, now used by more than 10,000 hospitals and medical centers and by more than 40% of U.S. doctors. One Biosciences raised €15M to advance its AI-powered single-cell transcriptomics platform, OneMap™, reinforcing precision oncology’s momentum. Meanwhile, Dispatch emerged with $216M to develop a universal solid tumor therapy – adding to a string of high-profile investments in targeted and AI-driven medicine.

On the regulatory and policy front, Trump’s newly released AI Action Plan promotes “regulatory free zones” to catalyze AI adoption across healthcare and government, while the FTC and HHS jointly warned telehealth platform providers about privacy risks associated with online tracking. Notably, Sarepta Therapeutics’ Duchenne gene therapy faced dual blows—with the EMA issuing a negative ruling and the FDA requesting a product pull following patient deaths, raising scrutiny over accelerated gene therapy approvals. Since, the FDA has now recommended resuming shipments of ELEVIDYS for ambulatory patients.

In science and innovation, new publications spotlighted breakthroughs in genomic modeling and precision health. A study linking polygenic scores for BMI to adult obesity strengthens early-risk prediction, while TWAS-based multivariate methods and autism subtyping efforts reveal hidden disease biology and patient subgroups. The All of Us Research Program hit a milestone with 860K enrollees, advancing equitable representation in genomic research. In the longevity space, controversial figure Bryan Johnson announced he is thinking of closing or selling his anti-aging startup Blueprint, and studies linking depression to telomere shortening reignited debate on mental health and biological aging.

Funding / IPO

• JotPsych Secures $5M Seed Round from Base10 Partners, Fast-Tracking Transition to First Fully Agentic EHR
• Charta Health Raises $22M Series A to Rebuild the Backbone of Healthcare Operations with AI
• Dispatch emerges with $216M and plans for a ‘universal’ solid tumor therapy
• Circular Genomics Raises $8.3 Million for Debut of Circular RNA Assay in Precision Psychiatry
• Dash Bio Secures $11M to Accelerate a New Era in Bioanalysis — Bringing Total Funding to $17.5M
• **One Biosciences Announces €15 Million Series A Financing to Advance Clinical Single Cell Profiling Funding will be used to establish the clinical utility of OneMap™, a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) driven single cell transcriptomic oncology platform, to guide treatment decisions, patient selection, therapy development, and optimize clinical trials
• **OpenEvidence Raises $210 Million Round at $3.5 Billion Valuation for AI Medical Search Platform OpenEvidence is an AI copilot for physicians that helps them make better decisions at the point of care. The company claims it’s already being used by a quarter of doctors in the U.S. Read also the The Use of an Artificial Intelligence Platform OpenEvidence to Augment Clinical Decision-Making for Primary Care Physicians publication.
• Ebenbuild Secures Euro 2.3 Million EIC Grant to Scale Digital Twin Platform for Respiratory Health

Stock

• Danaher Reports Second Quarter 2025 Results Revenues increased 3.5% year-over-year to $5.9 billion and non-GAAP core revenue increased 1.5% year-over-year
• Thermo Fisher Scientific Stock Jumps on Strong Results, Higher Outlook
• Oxford Nanopore Stocks Surge Amid Strong Growth Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC’s stock is on the rise following a robust first half of 2025, marked by a 28% revenue boost to about £105 million

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Waters and BD’s Biosciences & Diagnostic Solutions Business to Combine, Creating a Life Science and Diagnostics Leader Focused on Regulated, High-Volume Testing
• Siemens completes acquisition of Dotmatics

Precision Medicine

• The crisis over Sarepta’s Duchenne therapy is a mess. But the lesson is clear
• DNA From a Third Parent May Help Babies Avoid Inherited mtDNA Disease Method of mitochondrial replacement resulted in healthy births
• **All of US Research Program hits major milestone Over 860,000 participants are now enrolled in the U.S. precision medicine initiative, including 414K whole-genome sequences, emphasizing diversity and real-time health data. Notably, 77% of All of US participants come from groups whose health outcomes have been studied to a lesser extent in biomedical research. 
• New Precision Medicine Approach Identifies a Promising Ovarian Cancer Treatment
• How ‘Living’ Datasets Will Shape the Future of Precision Medicine
• Cancer breakthroughs mean disease ‘no longer a death sentence’

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Yourgene Health Launches LightBench® Discover
• Genomenon and UCB Partner to Advance Thymidine Kinase 2 Deficiency Awareness and Diagnosis
• Exact Sciences Announces Medicare Coverage For Oncodetect^™ Molecular Residual Disease Test In Colorectal Cancer

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• QIAGEN Expands NGS Portfolio with Launch of QIAseq xHYB Long Read Panels

Spatial Omics

• 10x Genomics And A*Star Genome Institute Of Singapore Launch Tishumap Study To Advance Ai-Driven Drug Target Discovery

Longevity, Health Span, and Life Expectancy

• **Longevity enthusiast Bryan Johnson says he doesn’t want to run his antiaging company anymore He says he’s thinking of closing or selling Blueprint to focus on his religion instead
• Just 7,000 steps a day could cut health risks, study says Walking 7,000 steps a day can be enough to boost your brainpower and help protect against a range of different diseases, a major study suggests – Read the full study
• Human Longevity, Inc. Expands $1 Million Cancer Prevention Pledge to Safeguard Against Late-Stage Ovarian Cancer
• Whole-body MRI ‘longevity’ firm Human Longevity hits 10,000 users, charging up to $19,000 for annual membership The average age of a Human Longevity client is 53 and the most popular membership tier costs $12,000. Under this plan, members receive two assessments a year, with fees often paid by clients’ employers. Human Longevity’s highest membership level costs $19,000 and adds additional tests.

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT

• Zifo Survey Shows Biopharma Racing Toward AI Despite Data Management Challenges Only 32% of scientists and informaticians feel confident in leveraging scientific data for AI initiatives. 70% of respondents report difficulty accessing data for AI, citing issues like siloed systems, manual capture, and outdated infrastructure. With just 39% of organizations using standardized data formats and ontologies, the industry must prioritize data harmonization to move from the “Age of Data Management” to the “Age of AI.”
• **Trump’s new AI action plan includes a push to grow AI adoption in health care and across the federal government by testing it in regulatory free zones
• AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors
• Microsoft says AI can diagnose tough medical cases better than physicians The company’s MAI-DxO system reached 85% accuracy on challenging NEJM cases, compared to 20% for doctors.
• A GPT-powered medical device certified in Europe raises questions about generative AI in health care The device, “Prof. Valmed,” helps doctors with diagnosis and treatment using medical information in its database
• CMMI to add prior authorization for some Medicare services Beginning next year, the CMS will launch an AI-powered prior authorization process for some services as it seeks to cut funding for what it deems medically unnecessary care.
• **Pharma AI readiness: How the 50 largest companies by market cap stack up Great data-driven analysis reveals how major pharma companies stack up across key AI readiness metrics, from technical partnerships to organizational culture.

Miscellaneous

• **Trump administration blocks NIH from awarding any research grants and contracts
• **FDA Informs Sarepta That It Recommends That Sarepta Remove Its Pause and Resume Shipments of ELEVIDYS for Ambulatory Individuals With Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
• Nektar Therapeutics Receives Fast Track Designation for Rezpegaldesleukin for the Treatment of Severe-to-Very Severe Alopecia Areata
• In surprise reversal, Sarepta Therapeutics says it will pause shipments of Duchenne gene therapy
• Epic pulls Humana insurance coverage information into MyChart Billed as a first instance of payer integration with a patient portal, the health plan now enables members who are already MyChart users to manage both their clinical care and insurance details in the portal.
• **FTC and HHS Warn Hospital Systems and Telehealth Providers about Privacy and Security Risks from Online Tracking Technologies
• Apple and Elevance’s asthma study shows wearables can help improve health for lower-income people, too Participants better managed asthma with the help of a smartphone app that used health data from Apple Watch 
• Health Insurers Are Denying More Drug Claims, Data Shows Offering a rare glimpse inside the hidden world of rejected insurance claims, new data shows a steady uptick among major private insurers.
• New kidney injury warnings added to all GLP-1 drugs by FDA
• **Sarepta woes mount as Duchenne gene therapy knocked back in Europe While partner Roche intends to seek a path forward for Elevidys, a negative EMA ruling puts Sarepta’s future in further jeopardy.
• Alnylam CEO: Congress must pass the MINI Act to protect future biotech breakthroughs
• Judge Dismisses Humana’s Medicare Advantage Star Ratings Lawsuit Against CMS
• Private Research is the New Public Research
• Scientists create tiny processors that function as ‘circuits’ inside human cells
• RFK Jr. Wants to Revolutionize the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program The results could be catastrophic
• **Inside the Silicon Valley push to breed super-babies Orchid applies custom-built algorithms to produce a polygenic risk scores for $2,500 per embryo-screening on top of the average $20,000 for a single cycle of IVF. Several genetic scientists doubt Orchid’s core claim: that it can accurately sequence an entire human genome from just five cells collected from an early-stage embryo, as experts have struggled to extract accurate genetic information from small embryonic samples. In addition, fertility doctors and scientists have serious reservations about screening embryos through polygenic risk scoring.
• **Drugmaker Sareapta Refuses F.D.A. Request to Pull Treatment Linked to Patient Deaths The regulator had asked Sarepta Therapeutics to halt all shipments of its therapy, Elevidys, after three patients died from liver failure after taking it or a similar treatment – Sareapta has since halted shipments on July 21.
• Trump 2.0 backs digital health in proposed CY2026 physician fee schedule rule
• How Trump’s megabill will impact health care 

Publications

• **A phylogenetic approach uncovers cryptic endogenous retrovirus subfamilies in the primate lineage Study reveals that ancient viral DNA buried in our genes plays an active role in controlling how other genes are turned on or off, especially during early human development.
• Complex genetic variation in nearly complete human genomes
• Detecting structural heart disease from electrocardiograms using AI
• **Polygenic Scores for BMI Help Predict Adult Obesity This new genetic analysis predicts risk of adult obesity from childhood
• A stratification system for breast cancer based on basoluminal tumor cells and spatial tumor architecture
• Human-specific gene expansions contribute to brain evolution
• The extracellular vesicle transcriptome provides tissue-specific functional genomic annotation relevant to disease susceptibility in obesity
• **Uncovering causal gene-tissue pairs and variants through a multivariate TWAS controlling for infinitesimal effects New computational tool uncovers hidden genes behind heart and metabolic diseases
• **Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals underlying genetic programs Research uncovers multiple autism subtypes with unique traits by analyzing data from over 5,000 children in SPARK, an autism cohort study funded by the Simons Foundation. The researchers used a computational model to group individuals based on their combinations of traits. The team used a “person-centered” approach that considered a broad range of over 230 traits in each individual, from social interactions to repetitive behaviors to developmental milestones, rather than searching for genetic links to single traits.
• Genome sequencing is critical for forecasting outcomes following congenital cardiac surgery Report results for a prospective observational cohort study of 2,253 CHD patients from the Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium with a broad range of complex heart defects, pre- and post-operative clinical variables and exome sequencing
• Time is encoded by methylation changes at clustered CpG sites Study describes new AI tool that can predict age from DNA with unprecedented accuracy
• **Integrated artificial intelligence in healthcare and the patient’s experience of care Models the patient’s experience of care as a continuous random variable on the open interval (−1,1) and refer to it as the AI Affinity Score which encapsulates the degree of AI integration that the patient prefers within a chosen healthcare system.
• **Exploring the association between depression and telomere length: A systematic review and meta-analysis Study suggests a significant association between depression and shorter telomere length, a marker of biological aging
• Uncovering causal gene-tissue pairs and variants through a multivariate TWAS controlling for infinitesimal effects Study offers clues of a person’s cardiovascular health-such as lipid and glucose levels and inflammation via a newly devised computational method and tool to improve how genes and genetic changes that cause diseases are identified.

News for the month June 2025

June was a busy month for acquisitions in the biotech industry! BioNTech agreed to acquire CureVac for $1.25 billion to strengthen its mRNA pipeline, while Illumina announced the acquisition of SomaLogic to boost its proteomics business and advance its multiomics strategy. Sanofi also announced a significant move, with the announcement to buy US biopharma group Blueprint for up to $9.5 billion. In a new development, 23andMe reached an agreement for sale of its data to TTAM Research Institute for a purchase price of $305 million, following Regeneron’s successful bid to acquire the23andMe data..

In the AI sector, DeepMind unveiled AlphaGenome, a powerful AI model capable of predicting how DNA sequences and genetic variants impact gene regulation by analyzing up to 1million DNA base pairs with base-level precision. Building on previous models like Enformer and AlphaMissense, AlphaGenome combines long-range context with high-resolution predictions across diverse molecular modalities, including splicing and gene expression. This tool, now available for non-commercial research, aims to enhance our understanding of genome function and disease mechanisms while addressing current limitations in variant interpretation and regulatory genomics.

Other notable news from June includes the FDA’s agency-wide rollout of the AI tool Elsa designed to expedite regulatory reviews and improve efficiency across its operations, US Health Secretary Kennedy decision to gut the vaccine advisory committee, and the Seqfirst-neo study highlighting the significant impact of genomic testing in the NICU and revealing gaps in current protocols. Additionally, concerns are growing within Moderna as the anti-vaccine climate intensifies, putting the company at significant risk.

Funding / IPO

• Knit Secures $16.1M Series A to Redefine Enterprise Insights with Researcher-Driven AI
• **Tempus AI to Raise $400M in Convertible Senior Notes Offering
• Insilico Medicine Closes Oversubscribed Series E, Bringing Total Funding to $123 Million
• Ryght Launches with Venture Funding to Develop a Generative AI Platform Purpose-Built for Biopharma
• Arima Genomics Closes $22 Million Series C Financing
• Generative AI company Abridge scores $300M series E backed by a16z and Khosla Ventures The generative AI company uses artificial intelligence to increase the speed and accuracy of medical note-taking, leveraging a proprietary data set derived from more than 1.5 million medical encounters. The company’s AI converts a patient-clinician conversation into a structured clinical note draft in real time and integrates it seamlessly into the EHR system.
• Autonomize AI Raises $28M Series A to Scale Agentic AI for Healthcare and Life Sciences
• Microbiome-focuses Company 32 Biosciences Raises 6$ million Seed Round to Advance Gut Microbiome Platform
• GeneCentric Announces $8 Million Series C Financing to Advance Novel Liquid Biopsy Platform for Precision Oncology
• UK: Transformative £86 billion boost to science and tech to turbocharge economy, with regions backed to take cutting-edge research into own hands
• Caris Life Sciences Announces Launch of Initial Public Offering
• Omada Health goes public at $23 per share, marking second major digital health IPO in 2025

Mergers & Acquisitions

• **BioNTech bolsters mRNA pipeline with $1.25bn CureVac acquisition
• **Illumina to acquire SomaLogic, accelerating its proteomics business and advancing the company’s multiomics strategy
• **23andMe Reaches Agreement for Sale of Business to TTAM Research Institute Following Final Round of Bidding in Court-Approved Sale Process
• Sanofi to buy US biopharma group Blueprint for up to $9.5 billion
• 23andMe Receives Court Approval for Sale to TTAM Research Institute, a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT

• **AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome AlphaGenome aims to predict gene regulation from DNA sequence – allows examination of candidate mutations, test hypotheses, and design experiments
• DeepMind’s new AlphaGenome AI tackles the ‘dark matter’ in our DNA
• AI targets protein linked to most human cancers  Insilico Medicine, in collaboration with Huadong Medicine Company, has identified new small-molecule inhibitors that disrupt the interaction between two critical proteins MYC and WDR5. This protein interaction is a key mechanism driving up to 70 percent of human cancers. The discovery, made using Insilico’s generative AI platform, is published in Chemical Biology & Drug Design.
• CHAI (Coalition for Health AI) collaborators open shop to validate algorithms, marking pivot point for health AI

Precision Medicine

• Disappointments in Gene Therapy, But Hope Remains
• Landmark Seqfirst-neo Study Showcases the Significant Impact of Genomic Testing in the NICU, Revealing Gaps in Current Protocols
• World’s First HLA-G Targeted Exosome Therapy for Cancer Enters U.S. Clinical Trials
• **Clinicians can ‘chat’ with medical records through new AI software, ChatEHR
• **The New Twist In Regeneron’s 23andMe Bankruptcy Buyout Regeneron not pleased with the bidding process opening up again, but willing to make a new bid for 23andMe’s assets, but wants a $10 million breakup fee if Wojcicki’s bid is ultimately accepted

Diagnostics / Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Aptitude Secures $9M Partnership with BARDA to Develop Rapid Molecular Diagnostic for Ebolaviruses and Marburg Viruses
• Avance Biosciences Launches NGS Center of Excellence in Houston
• Major Investment from Genome Canada to Help Advance ClarityDX Prostate Adoption Across Canada
• Galatea Bio and Fabric Genomics Partner to Deliver Comprehensive Genetic Testing for Common Diseases
• Labcorp Launches Labcorp Whole Health Solutions to Support Holistic Care The solution launches specialized test panels and a tailored test menu of more than 1,000 scientifically backed biomarkers for cardiometabolic health, hormones, micronutrients, longevity and whole body wellness.
• Quest Diagnostics to Develop Multi-cancer Stratification (MCaST) Blood Test Based on MD Anderson Technology
• Access Medical Labs, a Subsidiary of Empresas Aries Lab Expansion with Roche Diagnostics Systems  Access Medical Labs — the largest private diagnostic lab in Florida — has completed a full transition from Siemens to Roche Diagnostics systems in under 6 months. Such integrations typically span more than a year, making this move a breakthrough in lab automation and operational excellence.

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• Ultima Genomics Selected to Support the World’s Largest Proteomics Studies to Date Led by Regeneron Genetics Center
• Regeneron Genetics Center Selects Olink^® Explore HT for Landmark Proteomics Study of 200,000 Patient Samples

Vaccines / COVID

• Independent US vaccine body is planned after RFK Jr’s mass firing of CDC advisory panel
• US Health Secretary Kennedy guts vaccine advisory committee
• WHO Monitors New Covid Variant Spreading in America and Europe NB.1.8.1 has mutations that could increase the virus’s transmissibility and decrease the efficacy of certain neutralizing antibodies against it.
• ‘People inside Moderna are afraid’: As anti-vaccine climate intensifies, the company has much to lose
• **RFK Jr. boots all members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee
• **CREID Pro Quo: A Lie That Will Kill People
• **NIH terminates network aimed at stopping pandemics before they start

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data, Knowledge Graph, EHR

• CMS commits to tech initiatives to give Medicare patients, providers easier access to health data

Healthcare Information and Management Systems

• Epic says providers are sharing widely through its TEFCA QHIN More than 1,000 hospitals and 22,000 clinics are now exchanging patient data through Epic Nexus, the EHR giant’s health information network operating under the national interoperability framework.

Longevity, Health Span, Life Expectancy

• Development of a novel transcriptomic measure of aging: Transcriptomic Mortality-risk Age (TraMA)
• Human Longevity, Inc. Expands Pancreatic Cancer Prevention Commitment with $1 Million Pledge for Qualified Members
• MAXIOM and DNAthlete Announce Groundbreaking Partnership to Crack the Code on Human Health, Performance, and Longevity Using DNA and Adaptive AI
• Sage Healthspan Launches AI-Powered, Privacy-First Wellness App to Bridge Critical Gaps in Preventative Healthcare

Miscellaneous

• Japanese government panel approves producing human embryos from stem cells
• **Kennedy to oust care task force, WSJ reports; HHS says no decision yet
• **Roche considering direct-to-patient sales in US to bypass intermediaries
• Our brain’s mitochondria may play a crucial role in the onset of sleep
• Exclusive: CVS lays out $20B plan to modernize US consumer healthcare experience
• Saliva as a potential diagnostic medium: DNA methylation biomarkers for disorders beyond the oral cavity Study isdentifies hundreds of molecular markers in saliva that could reveal the risk of a person developing major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases.
• Samsung Biologics launches drug screening services, Samsung Organoids
• **Anne Wojcicki’s nonprofit wins bid to acquire genetic testing company 23andMe
• Vouched Approved for Integration in EPIC Toolbox for Identity Verification
• Congress Demands Answers on Data Privacy Ahead of 23andMe Sale
• Recursion Eliminating 20% of Workforce, Citing Pipeline Pruning and Capital Markets
• **Dozens of states sue to block the sale of 23andMe personal genetic data without customer consent
• AMA Calls for Senate Investigation of RFK Jr. — “We do not want to be on the wrong side of history,” one delegate said
• Open letter from more than 6,000 doctors, nurses, researchers and other health professionals to alert the public how the Trump administration’s actions are harming the health of Americans
• NIH walks back ban on new grants for universities with DEI programs or Israel boycotts
• **Cell and Gene Therapy Leaders Tell FDA: “Believe in American Solutions” Leaders from the world of cell and gene therapy, including molecular geneticists, immunotherapists, physicians, nonprofit directors, and patient advocates, shared their personal stories and policy recommendations with leaders of the FDA in an extraordinary roundtable. 
• Nearly 11M would become uninsured under GOP reconciliation bill: CBO The latest analysis from the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper found 7.8 million would lose coverage due to Medicaid cuts.
• CVS lays out $20B plan to modernize US consumer healthcare experience The investment will not just impact CVS and its vertically integrated businesses, including the pharmacy, health providers, and insurer Aetna. It will also allow competitors and other players in the sector to plug into the CVS system.
• Calls for RFK Jr. to Resign Grow Louder — More doctors are taking to social media to call for Kennedy’s ouster
• FDA rolls out AI tool agency-wide, weeks ahead of schedule

Publications

• **Large-scale genome-wide analyses of stuttering A landmark genome-wide association study (GWAS) including over 1 million participants (almost 100,000 self-reported cases) has uncovered 57 novel genetic loci associated with persistent developmental stuttering.
• Nucleosomes specify co-factor access to p53 Study found that nucleosomes act as a gatekeeper for p53’s molecular partners. By studying how p53 interacts with different cofactors while attached to nucleosomal DNA, the study has revealed a new layer of control over this critical protein’s activity.
• **AlphaGenome: advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with a unified DNA sequence model (preprint)
• **Understanding brain aging at spatial and single-cell resolution with machine learning
• **50,000 years of evolutionary history of India: Impact on health and disease variation Study generated whole-genome sequences from 2,762 individuals in India, capturing the genetic diversity across most geographic regions, linguistic groups, and historically underrepresented communities.
• Aneuploidy-induced proteostasis disruption impairs mitochondrial functions and mediates aggregation of mitochondrial precursor proteins through SQSTM1/p62 Proteome imbalance from aneuploidy linked to mitochondrial dysfunction
• RNA codon expansion via programmable pseudouridine editing and decoding Expanding the genetic code in mammalian cells using pseudouridine modified codons
• A phylogenetic approach uncovers cryptic endogenous retrovirus subfamilies in the primate lineage
• Mask-prior-guided denoising diffusion improves inverse protein folding
• Mood disorders polygenic scores influence clinical outcomes of major psychiatric disorders
• Identification of non-canonical peptides with moPepGen The newly developed computational tool, called moPepGen, helps identify previously invisible genetic mutations in proteins, unlocking new possibilities in cancer research and beyond. 
• Genetics of monozygotic twins reveals the impact of environmental sensitivity on psychiatric and neurodevelopmental phenotypes
• Resolving spatial subclonal genomic heterogeneity of loss of heterozygosity and extrachromosomal DNA in gliomas
• Multi-agent AI System for High Quality Metadata Curation at Scale This work demonstrates that an LLM-based multi-agent architecture can overcome traditional trade-offs in metadata curation, enabling both precision and scale, and offers a promising path forward for curating large public biomedical repositories for downstream AI applications.
• Epistasis in cardiac traits The combination of a new machine learning framework with functional genomics now provides evidence that cardiac hypertrophy is regulated by non-additive genetic interactions
• Epistasis regulates genetic control of cardiac hypertrophy To assess causality, RNA silencing in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, combined with novel microfluidic single-cell morphology analysis, confirms that cardiomyocyte hypertrophy is nonadditively modifiable by interactions between CCDC141, TTN and IGF1R
• Discovery of Novel Inhibitors for WD Repeat-Containing Protein 5 (WDR5)-MYC Protein–Protein Interaction
• **A generative AI-discovered TNIK inhibitor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: a randomized phase 2a trial

News for the month May 2025

Large datasets in healthcare: After much debate, whether individual 23andMe customer data is secure after 23andMe’s bankruptcy, the news about the acquisition of 23andMe’s data by Regeneron for $256 million has sparked discussions, particularly given the amount of 23andMe data assets, which consists of 15 million genomes coupled with rich personal and health contextualized data. Separately, in the UK, researchers have been utilizing anonymized data from 57 million patients within England’s National Health Service to train an AI model called Forsight. The scale and diversity of this dataset are significant, allowing for better representation of minority groups and those with rare diseases in research, which is often a challenge. Researchers are optimistic about Foresight’s potential to identify high-risk patient populations for early intervention and to shed light on healthcare inequalities due to the comprehensive nature of its training data. Lastly, the 10,000 Brains Project has launched an initiative called of Path-ND, which aims to digitize at least 5,000neuropathology cases over the next two years.

Illumina had a few noteworthy announcements, including the unveiling of PromoterAI, an algorithm with the goal of speeding up the diagnostic process for rare diseases; the launch of the latest version of their DRAGEN™ software, version 4.4, which is intended to enhance clinical oncology research and multiomic applications; and the reported filed lawsuit against Element Biosciences for patent infringement.

New policies that are raising concerns with the healthcare community: First, the much-anticipated and challenged MAHA report released by RFK Jr. raises concerns about vaccines, foods, and prescription drugs. Second, Trump has initiated a halt on new NIH grants for international health-research collaborators and will axe clinical trials abroad, which and could leave thousands without care. This action is particularly concerning as it restricts payments to foreign research partners, which poses a potential threat to studies on breast cancer and various other diseases. The impact on these new N.I.H. restrictions will jeopardize critical research that could ultimately benefit Americans.

Other noteworthy May news: The Frontier Tower in San Francisco is being repurposed from an urban vacancy into a dynamic living laboratory focused on longevity science, clinical translation and communal acceleration. Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes’s partner, is reportedly seeking funding for a new blood-testing start-up. The company describes its approach as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing.” In a groundbreaking development, a baby with a rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, was successfully treated with the world’s first personalized gene-editing therapy.

Funding / IPO

• Former Amazon Leaders Launch General Medicine: A Healthcare Store That Gives Everyone Access to the Best Care in the World – Company has raised $32 million in venture capital funding
• Juvenescence closes $76m first tranche of Series B-1 financing led by Abu Dhabi’s M42 alongside strategic partnership
• Hinge Health IPOs at $32 per share, a sign that interest in digital health may be back
• Roche announces $550 million investment to expand its Indianapolis diagnostics manufacturing hub
• Carta Healthcare raises $18.25M to expand AI clinical data platform
• Omada Health files to go public as industry looks to the next wave of digital health IPOs
• Nautilus Biotechnology Receives Delisting Notice From Nasdaq
• **Twist Bioscience Spins Out DNA Data Storage as Independent Company Atlas Data Storage, a newly formed company, will focus solely on DNA data storage technology and commercialization, with $155 million in seed financing round including ARCH Venture Partners, Deerfield Management, Bezos Expeditions, Tao Capital Partners, Earth Foundry, Rsquared VC, In-Q-Tel (IQT), and other undisclosed investors

Mergers & Acquisitions

• **Regeneron Enters into Asset Purchase Agreement to Acquire 23andMe® for $256 Million; Plans to Maintain Consumer Genetics Business and Advance Shared Goals of Improving Human Health and Wellness
• Function Health Acquires Ezra, Launches 22-Min, $499 Full Body MRI Powered by Ezra AI
• **QIAGEN enhances leading clinical genomics portfolio with acquisition of Genoox AI-powered software

Precision Medicine

• **23andMe and the Future of Human Genomic Data Privacy and Security Over 15 million genomes with profile and metadata used, hacked, bankrupted, then sold for $256 Million. What lessons did we learn? An article by Alex Zhavoronkov
• **AI model trained on de-identified data from 57 million people
• FDA Approves Genentech’s Susvimo for Diabetic Retinopathy
• **The 10,000 Brains Project Launches the “Path-ND” Digital Brain Banking Program to Transform Neurodegenerative Disease Research

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• **ELRIN: a European diagnostic long read sequencing network (ESHG 2025)
• **Illumina unveils PromoterAI, a groundbreaking algorithm to accelerate insights for rare disease diagnosis See the paper: Predicting expression-altering promoter mutations with deep learning
• **Roche announces new collaboration with Broad Clinical Labs to accelerate adoption of cutting-edge SBX sequencing technology
• **Illumina Sues Element Biosciences for Patent Infringement
• Nomic Bio Debuts $50 Proteome with Absolute Quantification Through Launch of Omni 1000
• **Illumina announced the launch of DRAGEN™ version 4.4 – powers clinical oncology research and multiomic applications

Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• BillionToOne Launches Expanded Panel for UNITY Fetal Risk™ Screen, Setting New Standard in Prenatal Testing

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data, Knowledge Graph, EHR

• Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and G42 Announce Strategic Partnership to Launch AI-Based Global Healthcare Delivery Platform
• MS and NIH launch autism research project using Medicare and Medicaid data Two weeks after it walked back claims that it was creating an autism database, the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced that the National Institutes of Health would build a real-world data platform pulling Medicare and Medicaid data. The goal is to enable advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records and consumer wearables, according to HHS in a press release.
• The Elastic Electronic Health Record: A Five-Tiered Framework for Applying Artificial Intelligence to Electronic Health Record Maintenance, Configuration, and Use

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT

• Predicting expression-altering promoter mutations with deep learning
• Computational challenges arising in algorithmic fairness and health equity with generative AI The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is advancing, but understanding its potential challenges for fairness and health equity is still in its early stages. This Comment investigates how to define fairness and measure it, and highlights research that can help address challenges in the field.

Gene Therapies

• As financial prospects for gene therapies dim, an ambitious charity picks up the torch A foundation in Italy is seeking to develop a model to deliver therapies to patients when drugmakers cannot
• **Baby Is Healed With World’s First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment – see also the source article Gene-editing was used to treat rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, that affects just one in 1.3 million babies. The disorder is associated with severe mental and developmental delays and eventually requires a liver transplant. About half of all babies with the disorder die in the first week of life.
  • Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease
  • Personalized Gene Editing to Treat an Inborn Error of Metabolism

Longevity

• Human Longevity, Inc., Expands Cancer Prevention Offering by Selecting the ClearNote Health Avantect® Early Detection Pancreatic Cancer Test
• **Vertical villages and the architecture of aging San Francisco’s Frontier Tower transforms urban vacancy into living lab for longevity science, clinical translation and communal acceleration.

Women’s Health

• $60 Million in Gifts Launch Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative and Enhance NYU Langone’s Commitment to Treat Women at Every Life Stage

Miscellaneous

• New Antibiotics on the Horizon, but More Responsible Use Needed The good news: novel antibiotics may be coming to the clinic. The bad news: they may not stay effective for long if we don’t do a better job preventing antibiotic resistance in the first place. An article by Meredith Salisbury
• **RFK Jr. Releases Much-Anticipated MAHA Report Report raises concerns about vaccines, foods, and prescription drugs
• **Oral ENPP1 inhibitor designed using generative AI as next generation STING modulator for solid tumors
• U.S. Hasn’t Seen a Human Bird Flu Case in 3 Months. Experts Are Wondering Why Health officials call for renewed vigilence
• Cancer Research Uncovers New Clues to Biological Function Meredith Salisbury reports learning from a recent cancer research conference, where scientists presented new discoveries about DNA and proteins that could change how we understand — and, ultimately, treat — this disease.
• **Trump halts new NIH grants to international health-research collaborators – Studies of Breast Cancer and Other Diseases are Threatened by the New Policy. N.I.H. restrictions on payments to foreign partners may jeopardize research into conditions that would benefit Americans.
• **Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. In the meantime, her partner Billy Evans is starting one of his own. He is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing.”
• Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, to retire DeSalvo’s last day at the tech giant is Aug. 1. She’ll be replaced by Michael Howell, currently Google’s chief clinical officer.
• Bill Gates announces plan to give ‘virtually all’ his money away and end the Gates Foundation in 20 years
• Who Is Dr. Casey Means? Dr. Means, President Trump’s new pick for surgeon general, has focused on the prevalence of chronic diseases and called on the government to scale back on childhood vaccines. A NYTimes article
• WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy protection to eliminate debt burden
• Even as questions grow over RFK Jr.’s vaccine policy, BioNTech doesn’t see ‘near-term’ impact
• Scientists question NIH project’s use of 20th century technology to make a universal flu vaccine
• AI genomics’ speed and accuracy in drug target discovery, disease modeling and detection, and gene therapy hold promise for delivering personalized, precise medicine to patients.

Publications

• ROBIN: A unified nanopore-based assay integrating intraoperative methylome classification and next-day comprehensive profiling for ultra-rapid tumor diagnosis
• Ancient Borrelia genomes document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever
• **Genome-wide association study of long COVID Study identified genetic link to long COVID. The identified gene variant is located close to the FOXP4 gene, which is known to affect lung function.
• Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease
• **Medical AI trained on whopping 57 million health records
• Personalized Gene Editing to Treat an Inborn Error of Metabolism
• **Genome-wide association meta-analysis of age at onset of walking in over 70,000 infants of European ancestry Study shows that when babies start walking isn’t just developmental, it’s in their DNA. Genetic variants not only shape motor timing but also link to cognitive traits and brain structure.
• Targeting the intracellular immune checkpoint CISH with CRISPR-Cas9-edited T cells in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer: a first-in-human, single-centre, phase 1 trial Read the accompanying article: “New gene-editing therapy shows early success in fighting advanced GI cancers”

News for the month April 2025

April brought significant policy shifts, notably:

• The federal court vacated the FDA’s final rule on Laboratory-Developed Tests(LDTs). This decision means clinical laboratories are not required to adhere to the phased implementation of the FDA rule and can continue developing and using LDTs under their traditional practices.
• A reduction of 10,000 jobs across several key health agencies, including 3,500 at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, 1,200 at the NIH, and 300 at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reshaping the landscape for biotech business. These cuts are expected to impact healthcare and research by decreasing staff numbers, potentially slowing down critical processes and affecting essential support services, while talented individuals are leaving the country.
• The decision not to expand Medicare coverage for obesity drugs. This is likely to increase the financial burden on patients, limit access to potentially effective treatments, and negatively impact the health of individuals with obesity.
• New tariff policies are anticipated to send the healthcare industry into “uncharted waters.” These policies are likely to increase healthcare costs, which may be passed on to patients through higher expenses or reduced care, disproportionately affecting low-income and chronically ill individuals who rely on affordable imports.
• The National Institutes of Health’s sweeping cuts of grants that fund scientific research are inflicting pain almost universally across the U.S. These changes have raised concerns about the future of scientific research and its impact on various fields, including cancer research, public health, and vaccine development. 

Some highlights in the (multi)omics landscape collectively showcase the dynamic and innovative nature of the sector, with

• PacBio reportedly working on enhancing methylation detection within their HiFi Chemistry;
• Illumina partnering with Tempus, signaling a strong push towards precision medicine through AI-driven genomic innovation;
• Ultima Genomics offering a substantial 3 trillion free sequencing reads to support the scientific community; and
• Tempus expanding its strategic agreement with AstraZeneca and Pathos, with the ambitious goal of developing the largest multimodal foundation model in oncology.

And then there is OpenAI who closed a $40 billion funding round, the largest private tech deal on record.

Funding / IPO

• Trellis Health Emerges From Stealth with $1.8M Pre-Seed Funding to Create AI-Driven Health Platform for Women
• Superpower Raises $30 Million To Launch World’s First Health Super-App
• Nutrition counseling startup Nourish clinches $70M to expand services
• Early cancer detection startup Craif raises $22M
• Gestalt Diagnostics Raises $7.5 Million Series A Funding to Expand AI-Powered Pathology Platform
• **Beyond Ivy League, RFK Jr.’s NIH slashed science funding across states that backed Trump
• **Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche announces $50B investment in US over next 5 years
• MoonLake Secures up to $500 Million in Non-Dilutive Financing from Hercules Capital and Announces a Capital Markets Update on April 29 to Provide Important Clinical Updates
• **Caris Life Sciences Raises $168 Million in Private Capital to Continue Platform Expansion With this funding, Caris has raised $1.86 billion in capital since 2018
• **OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, largest private tech deal on record
• Tariffs send healthcare industry into ‘unchartered waters’

Mergers & Acquisitions

• LifeMD Enters Women’s Health Market Through Acquisition of Optimal Human Health MD Assets
• Merck KGaA expands rare tumour portfolio with $3.9bn SpringWorks acquisition
• Shineco Announces Acquisition of Singapore Evolutionary Stem Cell Company
• **GeneDx to Acquire Fabric Genomics, Enabling Decentralized, AI-Powered Testing at Global Scale
• **XponentL Data Announces the Strategic Acquisition of SmartBits, Switzerland
• **Dotmatics Signs Definitive Agreement to be Acquired by Siemens Advancing a New Era of AI-Driven Innovation in Life Sciences

Precision Medicine

• Genomic Analysis: Overcoming a Formidable Challenge Discusses the details of Varhouse, a cloud-enabled platform that streamlines variant interpretation, implemented to enable real-time, scalable genomic analysis to identify disease-causing alterations.
• Flatiron Health Announces Strategic Partnership with Massive Bio to Enhance Patient Identification Capabilities and Services
• Sequencing exomes in healthy populations pays dividends Brian Krueger takes a deep dive into the Genomic Screening at a Single Health System article which makes a case for population scale exome screening as it finds actionable variants
• Delivering genetic insights: Mike Klein A podcast with Mike Klein, CEO Genomenon
• **The life-saving secrets in your baby’s DNA Robert Green’s Ted Talk from

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• Watchmaker Genomics and Revvity Team to Automate and Streamline NGS Library Preparation
• **PacBio Announces Plans to Improve Methylation Detection in HiFi Chemistry Company licenses novel deep learning-based epigenetic models from CUHK enabling the detection of 5hmC, 5mC hemimethylation, and 6mA in standard sequencing runs
• Gene Solutions And Element Biosciences Enter Strategic Collaboration To Advance Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) Technology Globally
• **Illumina and Tempus partner to drive the future of precision medicine through genomic AI innovation
• **Ultima Genomics Offers 3 Trillion Free Sequencing Reads to Support the Scientific Community As part of the “Count on Us” initiative, researchers affiliated with academic, public, government, or other non-profit institutions can apply for a share of 3 trillion sequencing reads—equivalent to approximately 9,000 human genomes at 30x coverage—at no cost. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through April 30, 2025.

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT

• Samsung Partners With Stanford Medicine for New AI Sleep Apnea Feature
• AI Meets Precision Medicine: A New Era of Predictive Biomarker Discovery
• **Tempus Signs Expanded Strategic Agreements with AstraZeneca and Pathos to Develop the Largest Multimodal Foundation Model in Oncology
• Multimodal Foundation Models: Redefining Molecular Cell Biology Through AI
• Mount Sinai Launches AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center
• Viome Launches AI-Powered Full Body Intelligence™ Test To Help You Stay Healthy, Slow Aging, and Make Illness Optional
• How AI is Cracking Medicine’s Most Challenging Drug Targets
• **AlphaFold is running out of data — so drug firms are building their own version Thousands of 3D protein structures locked up in big-pharma vaults will be used to create a new AI tool that won’t be open to academics.
• Mount Sinai Launches AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center The new Center will integrate AI with traditional drug discovery methods to identify and design new small-molecule therapeutics with unprecedented speed and precision. 
• FDA Watch: The Quiet Gold Rush in AI-Powered Medical Devices
• Samsung Partners With Stanford Medicine for New AI Sleep Apnea Feature
• Apple AI Health Coach Could Be Coming in 2026
• Oura Launches AI Health Coach

Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Labcorp Launches Molecular Residual Disease and Liquid Biopsy Solutions
• Gene by Gene and myDNA Are Partnering with the University of Glasgow’s Living Laboratory to Advance Pharmacogenomics in Healthcare
• **GeneDx to Offer Genome Interpretation as a Standalone Service Following Fabric Genomics Acquisition
• Verge Genomics and Collaborators Identify Digital Clinical Biomarker Endpoints Sensitive to Short Term Disease Progression in the Pre-treatment Run-in Period of VRG50635 Proof-of-Concept ALS Clinical Trial
• Pillar Biosciences Receives CMS Coverage for FDA Approved oncoReveal® CDx Pan-Cancer Solid tumor IVD Kit
• At-home saliva test for prostate cancer better than blood test, study suggests
• GeneDx Expands Commercial Footprint for Exome and Genome Testing with Inborn Errors of Immunity as a New Indication

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data, Knowledge Graph

• Taking Control of Your Data: Why Ownership Matters in Genomic Analysis
• Data4Life releases Data2Evidence as open source: a new chapter for global health research Data2Evidence is a digital platform built around the OMOP Common Data Model (CDM), designed to streamline the standardization of health data. It enables seamless collaboration between research institutions and public health organizations by supporting interactive data integration, cohort-based exploration, and privacy-preserving data management.
• ONTOFORCE’s DISQOVER chosen by The Michael J. Fox Foundation to enhance the integration and access of Parkinson’s disease research data
• ONTOFORCE announces enhanced functionality in DISQOVER to build cohorts in minutes

Women’s Health

• Women in focus: understanding women as digital health consumers Great overview by Rock Health how women consume digital health
• Mirvie blood test predicts preeclampsia months before symptoms The detailis of the study are published in Nature Communications
• Cofertility’s radical model for women: Freeze your eggs for free by donating half of them

Single Cell and Spatial Biology

• Syncell Launches New Preferred Partner Network Expanding Commercial Capabilities and Offering Services in Collaboration with OMAPiX and MS Bioworks
• Bruker to Launch Beacon Discovery™, Expanding Access to Live Single-Cell Functional Analysis (AACR)
• Akoya Biosciences and Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium (STCC) Partner on SUPER Study Designed to Advance Cancer Immunophenotyping for Patients in Singapore

Longevity and Aging

• HLI makes $1m prostate cancer prevention pledge to each member
• Longevity and precision medicine driving the agenda at Abu Dhabi Global Health Week

Microbiome

• Sequential Launches Multi-Omic Studies to Advance Human Health Characterization

Miscellaneous

• **23andMe will have court-appointed overseer for genetic data in bankruptcy
• **Will US science survive Trump 2.0?
• **FDA Chief Says He Won’t Reorganize Agency After Mass Layoffs
• **Federal Court Vacates FDA’s Final Rule on Laboratory-Developed Tests
• PacBio to cut headcount, costs in face of tariff headwinds
• **FDA Announces Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing Requirement for Monoclonal Antibodies and Other Drugs
• Who will dominate medicine & healthcare in 2025 AMAZON, Alphabet, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent and alike conquering healthcare – Towards customer driven business models, precision health and precision medicine
• Blue Shield of California shared the private health data of millions with Google for years Blue Shield said it used Google Analytics to track how its customers used its websites, but a misconfiguration had allowed for personal and health information to be collected as well, such as the search terms that patients used on its website to find healthcare providers.
• **Combating vaccine revisionism
• After Job Cuts, “We’re Entering a Very New Territory for Biotech”
• **Tracking U.S. Measles Outbreaks A great overview article by the NY Times
• **A dark hour for American science
• Wasteful Spending on Remote Monitoring? New Report Urges Policy Overhaul
• Tech modernization at community health centers in limbo after federal workforce cuts
• RFK Jr. Struggles to Navigate Frustrated Supporters and a Demanding Boss
• Study Shows that Shingles Vaccine Protects Against Dementia By
  Meredith Salisbury – Thanks to a unique situation in Wales (plus beautifully annotated medical records), scientists were able to compare the long-term results of vaccination — with surprising findings
• The state of Techbio today: Impressions post-BioIT World 2025 A great post-conference summary by Doaa Megahed (Bio-IT)
• **America’s Brightest Minds Will Walk Away America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. A NY Times opinion piece
• Trump administration declines to expand Medicare coverage for obesity drugs Biden-era rule would have made millions more eligible for the treatments, and been costly. The rule would have brought in tens of billions of dollars in new sales for drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. It also was expected to increase federal spending by $25 billion for Medicare and $15 billion for Medicaid over the next 10 years. 
• Tariffs send healthcare industry into ‘unchartered waters’
• OrderlyMeds Launches HealthTech Platform for Personalized Care
• Q1 2025 market overview: Ready, set, leap A RockHealth Market Overview In Q1 2025, U.S. digital health funding saw $3.0B invested across 122 deals. Compared to last quarter, Q1 saw more total dollars invested across a relatively steady deal volume, pushing average deal size from $15.5M in Q4 2024 to $24.4M in Q1 2025. While Q1’s overall funding uptick aligns with seasonal patterns—Q1 funding totals beat Q4 of the prior year in the past four out of five years (2020-2024)—these trends also reflect a continuation of last quarter’s market dynamics and the return of late-stage funding in digital health.
• Measles Outbreak Spreads in Southwest US: Vaccination Key to Containment

Publications

• Genome-wide association study identifies common variants associated with breast cancer in South African Black women
• Structure-based discovery of highly bioavailable, covalent, broad-spectrum coronavirus M^Pro inhibitors with potent in vivo efficacy The developed new drug candidates show great promise against the virus that causes COVID-19 and potentially other coronaviruses that could cause future pandemics
• **Microbial metabolite drives ageing-related clonal haematopoiesis via ALPK1 Study demonstrates that bacteria in Our Aging Guts Can Elevate Risk of Leukemia (aging)
• **Twenty years of genome-wide association studies Twenty years ago, Klein et al. published a landmark paper in Science, describing one of the first genome-wide association studies (GWAS).
• Characterization of non-coding variants associated with transcription-factor binding through ATAC-seq-defined footprint QTLs in liver
• Genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia through neuroinflammatory pathways associated with retinal thinness This new study demonstrates evidence of genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia can be found in the retina.
• **Translational genomics of osteoarthritis in 1,962,069 individuals The study included a meta-analysis of genetic databases involving nearly 2 million people including nearly half-million patients with osteoarthritis and 1.5 million controls. They found 962 genetic markers that were associated with the condition, including 513 new ones that were never reported in previous studies. Beyond identifying genetic targets with therapeutic potential, the study also provides valuable insights that could help tailor treatment strategies.
• **Molecular subtyping of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy
• **ATOMICA: Learning Universal Representations of Intermolecular Interactions A universal AI model for molecular interactions across all biomolecular types (across protein-ligand, RNA-protein, or protein-protein interactions). ATOMICA is an atom-scale, cross-modality Language-of-Interactions foundation model, encoding how any two biomolecules bind.
• Transcription factor networks disproportionately enrich for heritability of blood cell phenotypes CRISPR tool unveils genetic drivers of blood cell maturation
• Precision Omics Initiative Sweden (PROMISE) will integrate research with healthcare Precision Omics Initiative Sweden (PROMISE) aims to connect research with healthcare and establish Sweden as a world leader in data-driven precision medicine. PROMISE has been developed by leading researchers and clinicians from universities and university hospitals across Sweden.
• A non-syndromic orofacial cleft risk locus links tRNA splicing defects to neural crest cell pathologies Study unveils genetic pathway leading to cleft lip and palate formation
• Mechanisms of chromatin remodeling by the human Snf2-type ATPase SNF2H Cryo-EM reveals fine structural details of human chromatin remodeler in action
• Plasmid-driven strategies for clone success in Escherichia coli This study has general implications for understanding plasmid biology and bacterial evolutionary strategies which provide new hope in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

News for the month March 2025

In March, significant developments unfolded, notably with 23andMe filing for bankruptcy and Anne Wojcicki resigning as CEO. Discussions centered on the company’s customer genetic data. Particularly, around the fact that 23andMe with permission from a judge to sell customers’ medical and ancestry data and whether individuals should or should not delete their data. While the company claims its security measures surrounding the data will remain in place, its privacy policy says it can change those procedures at any time. 23andMe customers retain the ability to remove their genetic and ancestral data.

Moreover, March saw milestones such as the Alliance for Genomic Discovery’s completion of 250,000 whole genomes to expedite drug discovery. This endeavor, supported by NashBio and VUMC’s BioVU® biobank, involved sequencing by deCODE genetics and the integration of clinical phenotype data from VUMC’s health records. Additionally, a groundbreaking DNA sequencing dataset on UK child development studies, encompassing over 37,000 individuals across generations, was released for global research access.

Lastly, Science Advances spotlighted women’s health in a special issue amid historical neglect and looming political uncertainties. The collection delves into the intricate connections between hormones, chromosomes, and dementia, offering insights with broader implications for both genders. Essays within the issue advocate for a comprehensive exploration of sex differences in biomedical research, emphasizing the critical importance of such studies.

Funding & IPO

• Nimblemind.ai Raises $2.5M to Unlock AI-Ready Clinical Data for Healthcare Providers
• Brainomix Completes £14M ($18M) Series C Round to Advance Its Transformative AI Imaging Technology in Healthcare
• Hillstar Bio Launches with $67 Million Series A Financing to Develop Next Wave of Precision Immunotherapies to Transform Autoimmune Treatment
• Clinical AI Leader Navina Secures $55M Series C Funding
• Galatea Bio Secures $25M to Develop Global Biobank and Enable Precision Health at Scale for All
• Walgreens to go private in $10B deal
• Startups Prep for Potential Medicaid Cuts Reduced federal spending would likely sharpen focus on technology to improve efficiency, potentially benefiting some venture-backed companies
• Proscia raises $50M for AI-driven pathology
• Character Biosciences Raises $93 Million Series B to Advance Precision Medicine for Progressive Eye Diseases
• MSInsight Announces €1.6 Million in Seed Fundraising to Revolutionize MSI Cancer Diagnosis
• Freed Secures $30M Series A Led by Sequoia Capital to Free Clinicians from Administrative Burdens with AI Assistant
• ONVY Raises Over $2M to Revolutionize AI-Powered Health Coaching

Mergers & Acquisitions

• **Former UK IPO star Nanopore admits it is a takeover target
• Bristol Myers acquires cell therapy partner 2seventy bio for about $286 million
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals to Acquire Chimerix, Further Diversifying Oncology Portfolio The companies have entered into a definitive agreement for Jazz to acquire Chimerix for $8.55 per share in cash, representing a total consideration of approximately $935 million. The transaction has been approved by both companies and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.
• Newly-formed Archerfish Precision Diagnostics Pte Ltd: Ushers a New Era in Advanced Diagnostics Angsana Molecular & Diagnostics Laboratory (Angsana) and Pathnova Laboratories (Pathnova) have announced their merger to form Archerfish Precision Diagnostics Private Limited (Archerfish)

Precision Medicine

• **Alliance for Genomic Discovery completes 250,000 whole genomes to accelerate drug discovery The resulting AGD dataset is being made available to the alliance’s eight biopharma members using Illumina Connected Analytics as a shared research tool and data platform. De-identified DNA samples were provided by NashBio from VUMC’s BioVU^® biobank, and sequenced by deCODE genetics, a subsidiary of Amgen, using Illumina’s complete, end-to-end sequencing workflow including the DRAGEN analysis pipeline, and integrated with de-identified longitudinal clinical phenotype data derived from VUMC’s electronic health record data.   
• Golden Helix Partners with the Danish Healthcare Regions to Drive Advancements in Genomic Medicine
• Longevity Life Advisors Launches CancerEDGE: A Program Offering Advanced Cancer Genomics and Precision Health Services The program offers affordable access to services and technologies often excluded from standard insurance coverage. Longevity Life has partnered with Wellabe®, a leading company specializing in Medicare Supplement, Hospital Indemnity, Short-term Care, and Preneed Funeral insurance, to exclusively offer Longevity Life’s CancerEDGE membership to Wellabe policyholders at a cost of less than $30 per month.

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• NIIMBL Announces RFA for Optimizing Long-read Next-generation Sequencing Capabilities

Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• BillionToOne’s Pioneering Study Demonstrates 100% Accuracy for Non-Invasive Fetal RhD Detection in US Population
• GeneDx Enhances the Power of its Interpretation Platform with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered Gene Ranker to Enable Faster and More Efficient Clinical Analysis
• SOPHiA GENETICS Announces Two Million Patient Cases Analyzed, Marking a New Milestone for Data-Driven Medicine at NVIDIA GTC
• Galatea Bio Launches StrataRisk™ Polygenic Risk Score to Scale Common Disease Risk Assessment and Reporting (ACMG)
• MyOme Launches their Rare Disease Product Portfolio (ACMG)
• Foresight Diagnostics Launches PRECISE-HL Trial to Explore ctDNA-Based Therapy De-Escalation in Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma (cHL)
• Ubie and Nucleus Genomics Partner to Enhance Access to Genetic Testing and Drive Early Screening for Improved Health Outcomes

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data

• Aetion Launches Aetion® Evidence Platform Availability in AWS Marketplace, Accelerating Real-World Evidence Benefits for its Customers
• **Largest ever DNA sequencing dataset on UK child development studies available The first resource containing high-resolution DNA sequencing data for over 37,000 children and parents collected over multiple decades from across the UK is now available to researchers worldwide.

AL / ML / DL / GenAI / LLM / ChatGPT

• Causaly Announces Agentic AI for Scientific Discovery
• Ultromics Introduces AI-Powered Probability Scoring on EchoGo® Heart Failure for Enhanced HFpEF Diagnosis
• AI takes center stage: What 67 healthcare leaders are investing in this year
• Freed Secures $30M Series A Led by Sequoia Capital to Free Clinicians from Administrative Burdens with AI Assistant
• OpenAI Will Invest $50 Million In A New University Research Consortium
• Microsoft unveils new AI-backed clinical assistant Microsoft is upgrading its artificial intelligence assistant for providers to combine voice dictation, ambient listening and generative AI capabilities. The tool, branded as Dragon Copilot, will be able to help clinicians with a variety of tasks, like creating a structured note after a patient visit, automating referral letters or helping doctors find medical information from their own records and outside sources.
• Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google said it has expanded knowledge panels to cover “thousands” more health topics, which will also be available in more countries and languages. A new “What People Suggest” feature will allow users to easily search through online commentary from patients with similar diagnoses.
• Baidu Launches New Reasoning AI Model in Challenge to DeepSeek Chinese tech giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence model, which it claims rivals DeepSeek’s AI model across various benchmarks at a lower cost.
• Juno Health Partners With Avo To Integrate AI Into Its EHR System Juno Health, a leader in healthcare innovation and digital transformation, is partnering with Avo, an AI-powered clinical decision support platform, to integrate AI scribe technology into its Juno EHR (electronic health record) systems.
• Ataraxis AI secures $20.4M to expand its cancer prediction toolkit

Healthcare Information and Management Systems

• Epic building out agentic AI as the health IT giant also broadens focus beyond EHRs (HIMSS25)
• Salesforce releases pre-built AI agents to tackle time-consuming healthcare tasks Salesforce released Agentforce for Health, a new library of pre-built agent skills and actions designed to tackle time-consuming administrative tasks in healthcare. The AI tools can check eligibility, schedule appointments, verify insurance benefits and prior authorization and analyze clinical trial sites, the company said. Agentforce for Health will focus on tasks related to patient access, public health and clinical research.

Microbiome

• **NIST Releases Reference Material to Aid Gut Microbiome Research NIST is releasing a precisely measured and analyzed human fecal material known as the human gut microbiome reference material, which can be used by scientist when researching our body’s gut microbiome, which has been linked to a raft of serious diseases.

Miscellaneous

• **Advances the Science of Women’s Health – A collection of Science Advances publications reveals clues to aging and Alzheimer’s. Against a backdrop of historical neglect and a future of political uncertainty, Science Advances devoted a special issue to new research and perspectives on women’s health. The collection, highlights studies on the interplay between hormones, chromosomes and dementia, including findings with implications for men as well as women. It also features essays arguing for the importance of studying sex differences throughout biomedical research. 
• **Thinking About Deleting Your 23andMe Data? Here’s Why It Matters
• **23andMe files for bankruptcy, Anne Wojcicki steps down as CEO
• **What happens to your data if 23andMe collapses?
• **23andMe says it won permission from a judge to sell customers’ medical and ancestry data. Here’s how to delete yours
• **23andMe’s DNA data is going up for sale. Here’s why companies might want it
• **Screenagers to Silver Surfers: How each generation clicks with care Rock Health’s 10th Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Survey (the “Survey”) – capturing insights from over 8,000 U.S. Census-matched adults in 2024.
• Catch Me If You Can: Sequencing Screens for Rare Disease Genes The Scientist podcast features medical geneticist and chair of the department of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, Wendy Chung, talking about the rare disease field, which has evolved alongside advances in next generation sequencing.
• **NIH cuts funding for vaccine-hesitancy research. mRNA research may be next & Lifesaving mRNA Vaccine Technology Appears Targeted under Trump and RFK, Jr.
• Eric Green is out as head of National Human Genome Research Institute Longtime genetics leader is first director at an NIH institute to leave position under Trump. Eric Green, longtime director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has abruptly left his role.
• Data chiefs raise concerns about NHS federated data platform The Chief Data and Analytics Officers Network (CDAON) has questioned whether the NHS federated data platform (FDP) is capable of supporting local health systems.
• Roche Absorbs $2.4B Impairment in Overhaul of Spark Gene Therapy Unit
• **Advancing clinical genomics with Middle Eastern and South Asian pangenomes Creation of a comprehensive genetic representation for more than 2.5 billion people across the Middle East and South Asia could make a major contribution towards advancing precision medicine
• **Scientists at Colossal created a ‘woolly mouse’ with mammoth traits. Is it a step toward bringing back the extinct giant? The Colossal Woolly Mouse, created by Colossal Biosciences, expresses multiple mammoth-identified traits relevant to cold adaptation and provides a platform for validation of genome engineering targets.
• QIAGEN takes legal action to defend QuantiFERON intellectual property and protect innovations in latent tuberculosis testing

Publications

• Pharmacogenetics and adverse drug reports: Insights from a United Kingdom national pharmacovigilance database
• The genomic and epigenomic landscape of iridocorneal endothelial syndrome (ICE)
• Nanoscale DNA tracing reveals the self-organization mechanism of mitotic chromosomes
• Fasting for weight loss is all the rage: what are the health benefits?
• **Women twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as men — but scientists do not know why
• Reversible reduction in brain myelin content upon marathon running Interesting, but based on a small and inconsistent study size.
• **Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging
• **The somatic mutation landscape of normal gastric epithelium
• **Programmable mRNA therapeutics for controlled epigenomic modulation of single and multiplexed gene expression in diverse diseases
• **Real-world evidence provides clinical insights into tissue-agnostic therapeutic approvals Study utilizes the largest real-world clinical and genomic dataset of tissue-agnostic indications reported to date across more than 295,000 patients. The study provides a comprehensive evaluation of real-world outcomes for patients eligible for these powerful “pan-cancer” therapies, such as pembrolizumab and larotrectinib. These drugs are categorized as tumor-agnostic therapies, targeting specific genetic or molecular features of tumors rather than their anatomical location or histology.
• **Equitable machine learning counteracts ancestral bias in precision medicine Study focuses on improving human health by addressing “ancestral bias” in genetic data, a problem that arises when most research is based on data from a single ancestral group. This bias limits advancements in precision medicine and leaves large portions of the global population underserved when it comes to disease treatment and prevention. 
• Quantitative characterization of cell niches in spatially resolved omics data
• Spatially resolved mapping of cells associated with human complex traits
• Sex differences in GLP-1 signaling across species

News for the month February 2025

The month of February was characterized by news accompanying the annual AGBT conference, held on Marco Island. Some of the big headliners included the unveiling of SBX nanopore sequencing by Roche; Illumina expanding its portfolio with a spatial transcriptomics offering, making them the first company that will make different modalities (spatial, single cell, and proteomics beyond the genome) available; Ultima Genomics now providing the $80 genome with their new UG 100 Solaris™ system; and Oxford Nanopore expanding collaboration with 10x Genomics to enable seamless compatibility between their latest technologies in support of single-cell transcriptomics research.

Other noteworthy news for the month of February included the publication of the new open source AI model Evo 2 for biology to explore genome sequence, genetic mutation, and other types of data; a comprehensive map of the contributions of environment and genetics to mortality and incidence of common age-related disease in the UK Biobank; and the identification of 141 new disease-gene associations using a newly developed framework for analyzing sequence data at a cohort level and applying it to ~35,000 undiagnosed rare disease patients. Unfortunately, some more challenging news included the first measle fatality in Texas and the FDA canceling the annual meeting with vaccine experts that advise on flu shots for next year’s flu season.

Funding & IPO

• Abridge scores $250M, adds new AI tool to streamline ‘billable notes
• Frontera launches with $32M in seed funding The company’s AI-powered platform aims to help clinicians diagnose and treat children with autism and related disorders
• Avandra, which has developed a federated network for medical imaging and clinical data, has raised $17.75 million to accelerate the use of imaging-centric data for research and patient care
• Level Zero Health Secures $6.9M to Revolutionize Hormone Testing with Novel Wearable Device
• Startups Fay and Berry Street each bank $50M with growing investor appetite for personalized nutrition
• Healthcare startup Abridge raises $250 million to enhance AI capabilities
• Epicore Biosystems Raises $26M in Series B Funding
• Dxcover receives new investment round of $6.2M – Accelerates growth and its mission to transform cancer diagnostics and save lives by delivering the earliest cancer diagnosis possible
• Quibim Announces $50 Million in Series A Financing to Revolutionize Precision Medicine with AI-Powered Imaging Biomarkers
• Avitia Launches AI-Powered Platform for Rapid & Point-of-Care Cancer Testing with $5 Million Seed Investment

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Hims & Hers acquires at-home-testing company Trybe Labs
• Bio-Rad Offers to Acquire Digital PCR Developer Stilla Technologies
• Over $3 billion in a month: Why is Eli Lilly starting 2025 on a buying spree?

Precision Medicine

• Ginkgo Bioworks Partners with HaDEA in Up to €24 Million Consortium Project to Deliver Next-Generation ‘Agnostic Diagnostics’ for Respiratory Viruses at the Point of Care
• Datar Cancer Genetics Unveils Next Generation Multi-Analyte, AI-Powered Decision Support Platform for Personalized Treatment of Difficult-to-Treat Cancers

(Omics) Data Platform / Sequencing / Analysis / Instruments

• Roche
  • **Inventing SBX, a DNA sequencing breakthrough Roche has unveiled its proprietary Sequencing by Expansion (SBX) technology, marking its return to the next-generation sequencing (NGS) space. SBX introduces a new biochemical approach designed to address the limitations of current sequencing technologies, particularly in speed, scalability, and signal clarity
  • **Sequencing by expansion (SBX) technology
• Ultima Genomics
  • **Ultima Genomics increases output by over 50% and lowers sequencing costs by a further 20% with the introduction of UG 100 Solaris™ (AGBT)
  • **Ultima Genomics expands global access to high-quality, low-cost DNA sequencing on the UG 100™ sequencing platform through partnerships with multiple premier genomic services providers (AGBT)
• Illumina
  • Illumina unveils first-of-its-kind spatial transcriptomics technology
  • Illumina transforms multiomic research with new technologies to unlock deeper understanding of biology Company expands multiomics portfolio with new roadmap technologies spanning genomics, spatial, single cell, CRISPR, and methylation, as well as a new multimodal data analysis platform (AGBT)
  • Illumina and Broad Clinical Labs usher in new era of drug discovery with collaboration to rapidly scale single-cell solutions
• Complete Genomics
  • Complete Genomics unveils DNBSEQ-T1+ and DNBSEQ-E25 Flash The DNBSEQ-T1+ is a next-generation mid-throughput sequencer that completes a paired end 150 sequencing workflow in just 24 hours with Q40 accuracy. With three flow cell formats, two to four addressable lanes on each flow cell, along with dual independent flow cell operation, the DNBSEQ-T1+ provides increased data output with reduced turnaround time which enables increased lab efficiency and flexibility. With a throughput range of 25–1,200 Gb, a maximum capacity exceeding 1 Tb daily, DNBSEQ-T1+ allows laboratories to reduce the time to result that is important in a range of laboratory settings. (AGBT)
• Singular Highlights Key G4X™ Launch Milestones and Showcases Groundbreaking 3D Spatial Multiomic Performance (AGBT)
• NEB presents data on new and upcoming technologies, including fast, streamlined library preparation, plus new technologies for epigenetics and new sequencing platforms (AGBT)
• QIAGEN Strengthens Global Bioinformatics Leadership With New Data Center in Australia/Asia-Pacific Region
• DNAnexus Expands Relationship with Veeva to Advance Global Regulatory Collaboration
• Volta Labs Unveils 2025 Application Roadmap for NGS Sample Prep (AGBT)
• Bruker Advances Single-Cell Proteomics and Immunopeptidomics Performance; Unveils New Proteomics Software and Applications for Enhanced Biological Insights (HUPO)
• seqWell Announces MosaiX™ Library Preparation Kit for High Performance Workflows in Population-Scale Genomics
• Oxford Nanopore expands compatibility with 10x Genomics to unlock deeper insights in single-cell transcriptomics
• Singular Highlights Key G4X™ Launch Milestones and Showcases Groundbreaking 3D Spatial Multiomic Performance

Genomic / Genetic Testing / CDx

• Tempus and Stemline Therapeutics, Inc., A Subsidiary of the Menarini Group, Announce Collaboration to Implement Tempus Next, an AI-Enabled Care Pathway Intelligence Platform to Support Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer
• Ginkgo Bioworks Partners with HaDEA in Up to €24 Million Consortium Project to Deliver Next-Generation ‘Agnostic Diagnostics’ for Respiratory Viruses at the Point of Care
• Myriad Genetics Partners with PATHOMIQ to add Artificial Intelligence Technology Platform to its Oncology Portfolio
• Fore Genomics Partners with Inocras to Launch Pediatric Genetic Health Screening and Newborn Sequencing
• Ubie and Nucleus Genomics Partner to Enhance Access to Genetic Testing and Drive Early Screening for Improved Health Outcomes
• MyOme Announces Launch of CAD iPRS and Beginning Enrollment in the COMPASS-CAD Prospective Trial
• Watchmaker Genomics Advances TAPS Commercialization with Achievement of Key Technology Transfer Milestone with Exact Sciences
• Landmark Seqfirst-neo Study Showcases the Significant Impact of Genomic Testing in the NICU, Revealing Gaps in Current Protocol GeneDx conducted the study in partnership with Seattle Children’s and the University of Washington. The study evaluated 408 infants in the NICU, of whom 59% met eligibility criteria for rGS. Of those eligible, 126 infants were enrolled in the interventional group (IG) and received rGS, while others followed current diagnostic workflow protocols.
• Targeted Genomics Receives FDA Clearance for First Direct-to-Consumer Celiac Disease Genetic Health Risk Test
• GRAIL and Quest Diagnostics Provide GRAIL’s Galleri® Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) Test Through the Quest Diagnostics Test Ordering System
• Myriad Genetics Announces Two New Patents Granted for its Molecular Residual Disease (MRD) Assay
• Credence Genomics and Oxford Nanopore Technologies target rapid point-of-care pathogen detection with global collaboration
• Flatiron Health and Exact Sciences Partner to Advance Clinical Evidence Generation for Molecular Residual Disease Testing
• Foundation Medicine to Launch Hereditary Germline Tests, FoundationOne®Germline and FoundationOne®Germline More, in the United States Through a Partnership with Fulgent Genetics
• Fore Genomics Partners with Inocras to Launch Pediatric Genetic Health Screening and Newborn Sequencing
• BillionToOne’s Pioneering Study Demonstrates 100% Accuracy for Non-Invasive Fetal RhD Detection in US Population
• BillionToOne’s Northstar Response® Validated in New Peer-Reviewed Study, Building on Previous Clinical Research See the publication Molecular counting enables accurate and precise quantification of methylated ctDNA for tumor-naive cancer therapy response monitoring below. The paper validates the Northstar Response^®, BillionToOne’s novel tissue-free ctDNA liquid biopsy test that enables physicians to monitor cancer treatment response in Stage III-IV cancers with high precision and

Single Cell and Spatial Biology

• Pixelgen Technologies Unveils Nanoscale Proximity Network Assay for Analyzing Protein Interactomics of Single Cells, Launches New Product Line (AGBT 2025)
• 10x Genomics Unveils Innovation Roadmap at AGBT General Meeting, Advancing Leadership in Large-Scale Single Cell and Spatial Analysis (AGBT 2025)

Everything Data: RWE/RWD, Clinico-Genomic Data

• Atropos Health and Emory Healthcare Collaborate on Rapid Generation of Real-World Evidence to Advance Patient Care Through Medication Solutions
• Helix Launches World’s Largest Clinico-Genomic Cohort of GLP-1 Agonist Treated Patients
• Truveta Data expands beyond EHR data with linked closed claims for more than 200 million patients Closed claims complete the longitudinal patient journey in Truveta Data, enabling regulatory grade safety and effectiveness studies, replacing clinical trials and registries

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / ChatGPT

• Tempus and Stemline Therapeutics, Inc., A Subsidiary of the Menarini Group, Announce Collaboration to Implement Tempus Next, an AI-Enabled Care Pathway Intelligence Platform to Support Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer

Miscellaneous

• Trump’s Early Policy Moves Create New Headaches for Illumina A WSJ article on how President Trump’s early policy decisions—spanning trade, taxes and regulation—have injected uncertainty into businesses across various sectors. And for biotech firm Illumina it has been a barrage of bad news. The company was already grappling with fierce competition and slowing growth, making these new challenges all the more disruptive.
• Memorial Sloan Kettering Teams Up with AWS to Speed Up Drug Discovery
• Kaiser Permanente, Tufts launch food-is-medicine network Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed by Senate as U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the activist-turned-politician with a long history of embracing anti-scientific views, has become the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
• AGBT Announces 2025 Next Gen Leadership Award Recipients for the General Meeting
• Lilly joins Trump administration to announce $27B manufacturing commitment The drugmaker’s $27 billion investment will be made across four sites at locations to be announced later this year. Including other new manufacturing build-outs announced since 2020, Lilly has made commitments for $50 billion in new infrastructure, including sites in Indiana, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Trump has pushed US companies to bring manufacturing back to the US.
• Texas measles outbreak marks first fatality as more cases reported
• F.D.A. Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots
• **GeneDx Integrates with Epic, Enabling Broad Adoption of Genome and Exome Sequencing for Health Systems to Inform Patient Diagnosis and Accelerate Treatment GeneDx announces its launch on Aura, Epic’s specialty diagnostics suite, offering advance genetic sequencing within health systems electronic health records (EHR) to receive orders and send results.

Publications

• International Precision Child Health Partnership (IPCHiP): an initiative to accelerate discovery and improve outcomes in rare pediatric disease
• **A roadmap to precision medicine through post-genomic electronic medical records
• **Genome modeling and design across all domains of life with Evo 2 Transformative, new open source tool to explore genomic sequence data, genetic mutations, and more. Raved as the largest AI model for biology
• **Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality The findings provide a comprehensive map of the contributions of environment and genetics to mortality and incidence of common age-related diseases, suggesting that the exposome shapes distinct patterns of disease and mortality risk, irrespective of polygenic disease risk.
  • The study cohort presented multiple age-related diseases, including brain cancer and osteoarthritis. Multiple step-wise analyses were conducted, including an exposome-wide association study (XWAS), phenome-wide association study (PheWAS), and hierarchical clustering into a single Cox model. These analyses identified 25 independent exposures associated with proteomic aging, premature mortality, age-related diseases, and biochemical markers of aging.
  • The primary contributors to aging and premature death were socioeconomic status and deprivation, smoking, the number of household vehicles, physical activity, ethnicity, living with a partner, sleep, as well as mental and physical wellness.
• Metagenomic estimation of dietary intake from human stool Study presented a method to quantify food-derived deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in human stool metagenomes using a computationally efficient, decoy-aware mapping strategy. Identifies specific dietary features associated with metabolic syndrome in a large clinical cohort without dietary records, providing a proof-of-concept for detailed tracking of individual-specific, health-relevant dietary patterns without the need for questionnaires.
• Uncovering protein glycosylation dynamics and heterogeneity using deep quantitative glycoprofiling (DQGlyco) Study finds that gut bacteria influence brain protein modifications via glycosylation
• Deciphering the digenic architecture of congenital heart disease using trio exome sequencing data Study uncovers hidden genetic causes of congenital heart disease
• Functional analysis of cancer-associated germline risk variants Study identifies key variants linked to inherited cancer risk
• **Rare disease gene association discovery in the 100,000 Genomes Project Researchers in the U.K. have developed a new framework for analyzing sequence data at a cohort level. Applying this method to almost 35,000 undiagnosed rare disease patients led to the identification of 141 new disease-gene associations.
• SeqFirst: Building equity access to a precise genetic diagnosis in critically ill newborns
• Characterization of Plasma Cell-Free DNA Variants as of Tumor or Clonal Hematopoiesis Origin in 16,812 Advanced Cancer Patients
• A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age
• Molecular counting enables accurate and precise quantification of methylated ctDNA for tumor-naive cancer therapy response monitoring

News for the month January 2025

• Trump announces AI infrastructure investment backed by Oracle, OpenAI and Softbank

Following are archived industry news

Industry News – 2024

Industry News – 2023

Industry News – 2022

Industry News – 2021

Industry News – 2020

Industry News – 2019

Industry News – 2018

Industry News – 2017

COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2

Collated COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 Information