Biotech Notes #2: NVIDIA, NeoPlants, HelixNano
Biotech Notes #2: NVIDIA, NeoPlants, HelixNano
Digital biology, by NVIDIA
NVIDIA is a company that designs GPUs (chips) and software platforms for data science and video games, and has multiplied its value by 42,000% since going public. Its CEO, Jensen Huang, founded it in 1993 with the core belief that 3D graphics would become a fundamental technology for the video game industry.
Almost three decades later, the necessary elements have come together—primarily the vast supply of biological data resulting from the reduction in biotechnology costs and more advanced artificial intelligence models—to create what could be the best market NVIDIA serves: digital biology.
Today, on its CUDA-X™ platform, you can find services like Parabricks®, which analyzes genomes en masse up to 100x faster than platforms that use only CPU technology. This means analyzing a complete human genome (with 30x coverage) in 10 minutes instead of 24 hours while obtaining the same quality of results. Its users include companies like Agilent Biotechnologies.
Continuing with the topic of last week's “BioChatGPT,” BioNeMo is a generative AI platform that offers workflows and models like pre-trained ESM-Fold to predict protein structures, DNABERT to understand the function of non-coding genes, or scBERT that uses single-cell information to predict the effects of a knockout. Clients of these include Amgen and AstraZeneca.
The design capability of its chips allows NVIDIA to offer the fastest and most integrated platform to run these models. Furthermore, it has found great allies in companies like Amazon for storing this data. Additionally, models like ESM have been developed by companies like Meta. There is definitely a fascinating case for these and many other big techs joining forces to penetrate the biotech market.
NeoP1, by NeoPlants
NeoPlants is a Parisian startup founded five years ago with the goal of creating plants that are much more efficient at cleaning the air we breathe. To achieve this, they decided to start with indoor air, which can actually be up to 5x more polluted than outdoor air due to volatile compounds like toluene, benzene, and xylene from furniture, clothing, or building materials that can be considered carcinogenic.
This Earth Day, NeoPlants launched the Neo P1 sales: a biological system comprised of a pothos plant, its microbiota, and a special pot that metabolizes volatile organic compounds indoors 30x more efficiently than any other plant (and purifiers that don’t clean them) AND EVEN requiring less water than usual (water every 2 to 3 weeks).
Although the transgenic enzymes in the plant allow it to transform pollutants into sugars, this only accounts for 30% of the purification. The PowerDrops, a symbiosis of two genetically enhanced bacterial strains, metabolize the remaining pollutants and need to be repurchased every 3 months. As for the pot, it’s made out of biodegradable materials, it has a water indicator, and is designed to allow the biosystem to optimize the capture of pollutants.
Let's talk dollars. The initial package sells for $119 USD and includes the pot, the plant, and PowerDrops packages for 3 months. In contrast, a Dyson air purifier cleans fine particles that the Neo P1 does not, but the Dyson does not clean the volatile pollutants that the Neo P1 can. The Dyson ranges from $800 to $1,200 USD with filters that need to be replaced annually for about $80 USD. With PowerDrops at $50 USD, the Neo P1 is not intended to replace it, but it definitely proves to be more affordable… and aesthetic!
As a biotechnologist, it's easy to imagine buying this plant and the microbes only once and then reproducing them in vitro to avoid further costs. Although not everyone will do this, it is definitely a possibility to consider as a company: biopiracy as the unauthorized reproduction of patented biological material. For now, NeoPlants has thought about the biosecurity of other plants by creating one that does not produce seeds or pollen.
And as a bioenthusiast, my heart fills with joy every time I see NeoPlants posts on my Instagram feed — Can I really buy this on the internet today?! WOW — Boring scientists clearly did not see an air-cleaning plant coming, one that could completely change the perception of GMOs for people who had only heard fake and negative news about them. Today, they can touch and interact with biotechnology, and that… that is truly beautiful.
Immune-Computer Interface (ICI), by HelixNano
We know that the COVID vaccines that saved millions of lives were made with mRNA technology: code that instructs our cells to produce antibodies against the virus. What most people don't know is how the implementation of this technology during the pandemic expanded the possibility of creating mRNA vaccines not only against viruses but also against all types of diseases, especially cancer.
It is important to know that our cells naturally add chemical tags to our mRNA when they manufacture it, to differentiate between our own mRNA and, for example, viral RNA. The 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Andrew Weissman, who identified these tags so they could be added to synthetic mRNA and introduced into our bodies without causing an immune response. Subsequently, Moderna licensed Karikó's technology to create the COVID vaccines we know today.
For the past 11 years, HelixNano has been developing a platform for mRNA therapies, vaccines, and technologies. In search of a market to serve, the pandemic led them to shift towards developing COVID vaccines for immunocompromised individuals, which are currently undergoing clinical trials in Australia. This product enhances the immune response against the virus up to 100x by improving the RNA design to create more specific antibodies.
But one cannot think small when a physicist-mathematician and truly wonderful Finnish science fiction author is the CEO and co-founder. The most interesting aspect of HelixNano, and where cancer comes into play, is Hannu Rajaniemi's vision of an interface between the immune system and computers. In short, if our immune cells store and process information similarly to our neurons, why not create a Neuralink for them as well?
The unmatched advantage of mRNA vaccines over all previous ones is that the manufacturing process for any disease you want to treat or prevent is the same. Whether you want to program antibodies against a virus, receptors for cancer cells, or train your cells for organ transplantation, mRNA remains your programming language, which could also be a regulatory advantage. Define the target, design the dart, print it.
Previous vaccines to mRNA were a one-way interface that trained our immune system to respond to a threat. Today, liquid biopsies use DNA sequencing to detect cancer years before it manifests, when almost all cases are curable. With the exponential reduction in sequencing costs, Hannu envisions a world where we constantly sequence our DNA, design personalized mRNA with AI, manufacture it through portable microfluidics, and administer it through the skin.
This is just the beginning. What if we could train our immune system to accept brain transplants? How about producing enzymes to protect us from radiation on Mars? Growing in-vitro meat cells that produce their own growth factors to be as affordable as beef? Truly eradicating all diseases, including cancers? mRNA could be the answer to many of these questions.
Hey, Sofia here — Biotech Notes is a new format I’m trying out to teach myself about things I’ve been curious about but don’t have enough time to write a whole article on. I’m also sharing these in Spanish (check out the Español tab on my Substack page) to evangelize our awesome biotech future to more awesome people around the world. Thanks for being part of the journey and sharing it with your friends :)