The hottest Biotech Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways

F Cancer

Marcus on AI • 13437 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Biology is incredibly complex and varies from person to person, so many drugs that look promising in animals or early tests still fail in humans.
Current AI is not a magic cure—existing models are limited and often trained on language, so much stronger algorithms that can reason about chemistry, physics, and biology are needed for major breakthroughs.
In the near term, AI can help by streamlining paperwork, patient recruitment, and researcher tools, but real progress also depends on economic and systemic changes like better incentives and funding.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #25

Faster, Please! • 1005 implied HN points • 21 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI is surging with huge investments and a shift from answering questions to taking action, including efforts to build fully automated researchers, but it also brings real risks like security concerns, harmful chatbot behavior, and deepfakes.
Energy is still the core currency of civilization: disruptions to energy quickly ripple into food and economic costs, and long-term progress depends on energy multiplied by knowledge — energy times information.
Investors and scientists are leaning into big technologies like nuclear fusion, commercial space stations, and quantum computing, even as other industries such as batteries and some electric-vehicle realities face tough economic and practical challenges.

Genetically Modified Weeds

Doomberg • 7451 implied HN points • 07 Feb 26

🌞 Climate & Environment Biotech

Roundup and Roundup Ready GMO seeds let farmers spray one broad-spectrum herbicide over crops, making weed control much simpler and hugely profitable for seed and chemical companies.
Heavy use of glyphosate created major problems. Health concerns led to global litigation after the WHO called it 'probably carcinogenic', and corporate fallout reshaped the industry.
Relying on the same herbicides across huge acreages produced resistant weeds, and now spreading 'superweeds' threaten current farming systems; pairing new GMO traits with more chemicals often encouraged even more over-the-top spraying, which worsened resistance.

Networked Conviction 005

Investing 101 • 55 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26

💼 Business Biotech

Multidisciplinary skunkworks like Imagineering bring artists, engineers, storytellers, and others together to turn creative uncertainty into tangible products. They act as permanent studios that translate ideas into real experiences.
Flagship Pioneering is a repeatable biotech incubator model that has spawned huge winners like Moderna and demonstrates how a discovery mechanism can generate major portfolio value. It shows the power of intentionally building companies from uncertainty.
With AI creating exponentially more uncertainty, there’s a clear opportunity to adapt the Flagship model to systematically find and build AI deployment businesses. Replicating that incubator approach could turn AI-driven uncertainty into productive, investable companies.

Investopedia: Novavax Stock Plunges as FDA Puts Hold on Vaccines Because of Safety Concerns

Popular Rationalism • 653 implied HN points • 18 Oct 24

🏥 Health Politics Biotech

The FDA has paused Novavax's COVID-19 and flu vaccine testing due to safety issues.
One patient reported nerve damage after receiving the combination vaccine shot.
Novavax is working with the FDA to resolve these concerns and hopes to continue with its trials soon.

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🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #24

Faster, Please! • 1005 implied HN points • 07 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

When governments label tech firms as national security risks for refusing certain military uses, it creates political loyalty tests that scare off investors and can slow innovation.
Multiple breakthrough technologies—AI/AGI, nuclear, quantum, genomics, and space—are accelerating at once and driving a global race for economic and strategic leadership.
That rapid progress brings real risks: geopolitical shocks can disrupt chip and supply chains, data centers raise energy and inflation concerns, and job losses and public backlash are growing policy challenges.

Links For December 2025

Astral Codex Ten • 18651 implied HN points • 10 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI is now the dominant political and technological battleground, driving fights over regulation, funding, and geopolitics like chip exports and PAC spending.
Many hyped tech and biotech ventures make grand claims and show warning signs of fraud or shaky science, so investors and users should be skeptical and favor proven alternatives.
AI’s spread will upend jobs and even the role of wealthy capitalists, creating pressure for redistribution or new power dynamics, so governments need better transparency, auditing, and realistic regulation.

✨⚕️ Must AI cure cancer?

Faster, Please! • 1370 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI doesn't have to instantly cure cancer to be a huge win. Even steady improvements that make treatments more precise and drug discovery cheaper would be transformative.
AI is already helping reverse decades of falling pharma productivity by acting as a better front-end filter — boosting candidate success rates, shortening timelines by roughly 20–25%, and cutting development costs by about 25–30% — which could unlock tens to hundreds of billions in value.
Apocalyptic job-loss stories are overstated because they ignore new job creation, the gap between lab capability and workplace adoption, and political and economic constraints that will slow large-scale disruption.

Going Founder Mode On Cancer

The Century of Biology • 2387 implied HN points • 18 Jan 26

🔬 Science Biotech

A founder‑mode, information‑maximalist approach — exhaustive documentation, frequent advanced diagnostics, and a ladder of personalized treatment options — can enable faster, creative decisions and in this case helped drive the cancer into remission.
Even with money and motivation, practical barriers in hospitals, IRBs, regulators, and the high cost of drug development make access to tissue, cutting‑edge diagnostics, and experimental therapies very hard to obtain and scale.
Emerging platform technologies like single‑cell sequencing, neoantigen vaccines, radioligand therapies, personalized CRISPR and engineered cell therapies make truly individualized cancer care possible, but today they’re expensive and unevenly distributed and will need new regulatory and manufacturing models to become broadly available.

Weekly Dose of Optimism #182

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 210 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Big advances in clean energy are moving from lab to grid. Gigawatt‑hour iron‑air batteries are being deployed for multi‑day storage and startups are pursuing stellarator fusion plants, both pointing to more reliable, decarbonized power and new manufacturing jobs.
Medical research is producing transformative, non‑traditional therapies. Phase‑3 psilocybin trials show strong results for treatment‑resistant depression and other studies suggest benefits for chronic conditions like post‑treatment Lyme, while vitamin B2/B3 genomics identified a simple, life‑saving therapy for NAXD in animal models.
The internet economy is accelerating and reshaping commerce and payments. Fast growth in new businesses, app activity, and stablecoin payment volume, plus concepts like agentic commerce, suggest rising momentum — but widespread progress will depend on regulatory and permissioning systems.

The Post-Post-Apocalypse

From the New World • 415 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

The "New Cold War" story is a dead end; both the US and China run similar boomer-led schemes that enrich the old and scapegoat others, so blaming the foreign enemy misses the real problem.
A startup-focused network state near Singapore shows you can recreate SF-style software and philosophy culture with much better safety, lower cost, and stronger talent networks, making human capital flight a powerful geopolitical and personal option.
AI’s biggest near-term economic effect will be to supercharge B2B SaaS, lowering the bar to start useful automation businesses and creating an "AI middle class" of process-setting jobs rather than only producing huge research breakthroughs.

The Innovation Lie

Anima Mundi • 288 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Major breakthroughs and foundational technologies mostly come from public research, universities, and shared knowledge rather than purely from private companies, and public R&D yields outsized social returns.
Large parts of the current market are extractive—patent thickets, intermediaries, and financial engineering capture value instead of creating useful things—driving inequality and limiting real wellbeing.
Commons-based, open-source design combined with abundant solar energy and biological/local manufacturing can collapse material costs and enable massive, regenerative growth that outperforms competitive, rent-seeking systems.

On AI Infrastructure in Biology

The Century of Biology • 1416 implied HN points • 23 Nov 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

The biotech industry is seeing a shift towards using AI technologies. This is creating new opportunities for businesses that provide AI tools and infrastructure rather than just focusing on drug development.
AI can potentially replace traditional experiments in biology, speeding up research and reducing costs. This allows scientists to explore many more ideas and possibilities without being limited by the physical experimentation process.
Investing in AI infrastructure for biotech could lead to significant advancements and financial returns. If companies successfully scale their AI solutions, they could capture a big slice of the growing biotech market.

Roche Axelios Pricing

ASeq Newsletter • 72 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Roche’s Axelios is priced competitively with Illumina — offering $150 per duplex genome and very low simplex read costs — but not so cheap that it will immediately displace Illumina, so adoption will be gradual.
Roche has clear advantages over newer rivals: it’s lower risk, more technically interesting, and cheaper for many counting/simplex applications, so it’s likely to outcompete companies like Ultima and Element.
Reusable chips and low per-run chip costs give Roche room to cut prices or offer big customer discounts later, but high switching costs and Illumina’s entrenched position mean market changes will be slow and uneven.

Is Vivek Ramaswamy A BioTech Ponzi Schemer & Deep State Asset?

2nd Smartest Guy in the World • 4658 implied HN points • 15 Jan 24

💼 Business Biotech

Vivek Ramaswamy made millions from biotech companies that failed, leading to accusations of running a Ponzi Scheme.
Ramaswamy has been critiquing corporations engaging in what he calls 'socially conscious investing' as a threat to America's well-being.
Despite accusations and controversies, Ramaswamy's net worth has been estimated to be over $950 million, raising questions about his business practices.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #17

Faster, Please! • 365 implied HN points • 17 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Big tech's huge power needs and prepaid contracts are making small modular nuclear reactors financially real, giving nuclear a better shot than past revivals.
AI can generate lots of creative output, but people still prefer human-made art and live presence, so human judgment and improvisation will stay valuable.
With births falling, countries will face real labor shortages that humanoid robots and physical AI — paired with immigration — are likely needed to fill in-care, construction, and logistics jobs.

FDA refuses to review Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine application

Force of Infection • 153 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26

🏥 Health Politics Biotech

The FDA refused to start reviewing Moderna’s mRNA seasonal flu vaccine application, removing a potential new mRNA option for influenza.
The agency said the trial used a comparator that didn’t reflect the best standard of care, and Moderna says that contradicts prior FDA guidance, meaning the application was dismissed for study-design reasons rather than safety or effectiveness.
Regulatory unpredictability like this raises the financial risk of doing clinical trials, which can push companies away from R&D and ultimately reduce patient access to new vaccines.

Rating Trump's FDA's "Top 10" Year-1 Reforms

Cremieux Recueil • 229 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26

🏥 Health Politics Biotech

The FDA published a top-10 list of first-year reforms covering things like a food supply reset, eliminating unnecessary animal testing, public decision letters, priority vouchers, HRT, tighter pharma ad rules, agency-wide AI, easier biosimilars, expanded cell and gene therapies, and more domestic manufacturing.
The piece focuses on what the FDA actually accomplished with these initiatives and whether those changes matter in practice.
Each of the ten items is rated individually, and the FDA receives an overall pass-or-fail grade for its first year based on those ratings.

⚔️☠️ The billionaire war against death

Faster, Please! • 731 implied HN points • 07 Dec 25

💼 Business Biotech

Rich people have always tried to cheat death, but now they’re putting real money into technologies that could actually extend life.
Huge private investments are funding longevity work like cellular reprogramming and age‑reversal drugs, making radical life extension a plausible goal.
That shift raises big social and economic questions about who gets access, how societies change if only the wealthy can postpone death, and what it means for the rest of us.

Illumina Deliver Q70. Complete Genomics Sold.

ASeq Newsletter • 51 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Illumina is targeting Q50 overall read quality by the end of 2027, and some kits will achieve Q70.
They’re releasing much higher-throughput options, including a 5 billion-read flow cell, a 1.5 billion-read 600-cycle kit, and upgrades pushing 10 billion reads to 14 billion (20-hour runs) and 25 billion to 35 billion reads.
Per-run prices will go up while cost per base goes down, and Complete Genomics has been sold.

🧬✨ An AI-genetics revolution — and arms race: A Quick Q&A with Bill Drexel

Faster, Please! • 365 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI is rapidly boosting genetic engineering, making it much easier to design and optimize genes in powerful new ways.
That combo could trigger a dangerous international arms race, with China appearing willing to push ahead aggressively.
The moral and ethical stakes are huge but aren’t getting enough public attention, so we need more debate, oversight, and urgency.

Weekly Dose of Optimism

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 117 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Personalized, data-driven cancer care can work: one determined patient used intensive diagnostics, bespoke therapies, and a coordinated team to reach remission, pointing to a future where tailored oncology is more widely available.
mRNA cancer vaccines look promising when combined with immunotherapy — a Moderna/Merck trial cut the risk of death or recurrence by about half in melanoma, suggesting vaccines will become an important part of cancer treatment.
Big engineering projects are scaling to solve huge problems — drone delivery (Zipline) is expanding life-saving logistics, The Ocean Cleanup is intercepting a growing share of plastic pollution, and space-based networks like TeraWave aim to provide high-capacity global connectivity for enterprises.

Roche SBX Interest High, Workflow Questions

ASeq Newsletter • 21 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Interest in Roche’s Axelios sequencer is high and early reactions to AGBT pricing look positive.
If those early responses hold, about 58% of NovaSeq X sales could shift to Axelios, roughly 150 units based on 2025 Illumina numbers.
That level of market shift is probably unrealistic, so real-world impact is uncertain and likely smaller.

Solid State Nanopores - Cambridge Nucleomics!

ASeq Newsletter • 7 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26

🔬 Science Biotech

A Cambridge-based solid-state nanopore company founded around 2021 recently closed a $736K seed round.
Their method hybridizes barcodes with bulky loops to RNA or DNA and threads them through a solid-state nanopore. Varying the loop patterns or spacing creates distinct labels that can be counted.
They’re targeting clinical counting applications such as point-of-care sepsis tests, early cancer detection, and minimal residual disease monitoring.

Weekly Dose of Optimism #176

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 130 implied HN points • 17 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

New medical AI can now natively read full 3D scans and handle medical speech, making it much easier for developers to build tools that help doctors interpret MRIs and CTs.
Generative AI platforms like Claude are shrinking the gap between idea and product, letting people quickly prototype apps, viewers, and games without deep engineering.
Hard-tech is accelerating: Tesla’s fast, cleaner lithium refinery eases battery supply bottlenecks, robotic IVF systems are automating embryo creation to boost success and scale, and governments and companies are moving forward on lunar power and hospitality projects.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #15

Faster, Please! • 274 implied HN points • 13 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI is racing forward — new superhuman claims, big model releases, and CEO buy-in — but that progress is colliding with safety worries, hacking risks, and political fights over regulation.
Major bets are popping up across many frontiers, from space solar and air taxis to solar geoengineering, GLP-1 drugs, and renewed plans for Mars, showing broad technological momentum.
Wealthy investors now treat aging as an engineering problem and are pouring money into longevity tech and drugs; if those bets pay off, longer healthy lives could reshape work, politics, and inequality.

Those who danced were thought insane by those who couldn't hear the music

Trevor Klee’s Newsletter • 298 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

By 2025, materials science, plant/animal breeding, and energy systems are closest to the ambitious technical goals, while medicine, disaster control, and especially precise weather control lag well behind.
Without a major AI revolution, the next five years will bring steady gains: renewables, storage, materials, and crop improvements will move substantially, but life extension, earthquake/eruption control, and weather steering will only improve modestly.
If abundant, well-aligned superintelligent AI appears by 2030, discovery and design in medicine, materials, energy, and agriculture could accelerate dramatically, yet physical scaling, safety, regulation, politics, and the chaotic nature of weather will still constrain full realization.

Weekly Dose of Optimism #175

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 98 implied HN points • 10 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

A redesigned national food pyramid gives clearer, more science-aligned guidance and could nudge people toward healthier eating.
Next‑generation weight‑loss drugs (GLP‑1 combos and oral pills) are proving remarkably effective and becoming much more accessible, but a booming grey market for peptides creates safety and supply‑chain risks.
Open‑source AI platforms like Boltz Lab are putting powerful protein and small‑molecule design tools into many hands, speeding drug discovery and democratizing biotech research.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #16

Faster, Please! • 182 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

AI is booming — big funding rounds and real technical wins are driving rapid adoption across industries, but that growth is creating infrastructure strains and political debates about regulation and energy use.
Global fertility is plunging and unpredictable, with many countries below replacement level; standard policy tools have had limited effect, so long-term population outcomes are highly uncertain.
Private and public bets on space and biotech are accelerating commercialization, from massive valuations and IPO plans for space firms to ambitious genetic-rescue projects and new leadership at NASA.

250 Roche Axelios Instruments In the First Year Possible?

ASeq Newsletter • 14 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26

💼 Business Biotech

Informal polls on Discord and LinkedIn had low response and are hard to interpret, but they did identify a small group of respondents who actually have purchasing influence.
Even though Roche's Axelios pricing isn't much better than Illumina's, the product still appears compelling to a subset of potential buyers.
Using rough assumptions about market size (>2000 instruments) and the poll results, a back‑of‑the‑envelope projection yields about 250 Axelios units in the first year, but that number relies on several optimistic assumptions and substantial uncertainty.

Estimating Roche Shipments

ASeq Newsletter • 14 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26

💼 Business Biotech

You can bound Roche's first-year instrument shipments by comparing to historical first-year shipments of similar sequencing platforms.
Historical examples vary a lot — from roughly 20 units up to about 500 units in their first year — so Roche could plausibly fall anywhere in that range.
Producing a useful estimate will require more data and clear assumptions about market demand, pricing, and manufacturing capacity.

Bioaccelerationism Is a No-Brainer

Richard Hanania's Newsletter • 2682 implied HN points • 20 Dec 24

🕹 Technology Biotech

Bioaccelerationism focuses on advancing biotechnology that improves reproduction, making it easier for couples to have children. New methods are coming out that can help reduce the stress and difficulty associated with traditional fertility treatments like IVF.
Unlike some technologies that can quickly change the world, biotechnology develops slowly, giving society time to understand its effects. This means we can monitor and ensure safety as new methods emerge over time.
The goals of biotech often align with the needs of parents and society. Developing health, intelligence, and beauty can benefit everyone, and the risks are generally limited to individuals or families rather than posing a threat to society as a whole.

Why No Japanese Sequencing Companies?

ASeq Newsletter • 36 implied HN points • 03 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Japan has deep expertise and built many key components for sequencing — from contributions to the Human Genome Project to ISFET sensing and imaging sensors — yet it has produced almost no homegrown DNA or protein sequencing companies.
Possible reasons include a lack of strong domestic genome centers and expert customers, structural problems with the startup ecosystem, and past institutional missteps that discouraged local product development.
The shift toward clinical, sample-to-answer sequencing and the still-open field of protein sequencing are clear opportunities Japan could exploit with its research and manufacturing strengths, and funding startups would build domestic talent and capability even if many ventures fail.

A Brief History of SaaS and What's Next

Ulysses • 619 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24

🕹 Technology Biotech

The relationship between return-seeking capital and new technology development creates cycles that go from early adoption to commodity status, setting the stage for the next wave of technological innovation.
Software in the SaaS sector is moving towards commodification, freeing up resources for progressing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, and space innovations.
Advancements in robotics, biotech, accelerated design and manufacturing, and space technology are being driven by the commodification of software intelligence, leading to a new Golden Age of innovation in various industries.

Beyond Earth Technologies: Call to Action

Space Ambition • 799 implied HN points • 05 Jan 24

🕹 Technology Biotech

Beyond Earth Technologies is looking for innovative projects that can help with living on other planets and also have real opportunities for business now.
If you're a scientist or inventor working on things like energy, robots, or habitats, you can apply to join their program by January 31st.
You can share this opportunity with friends who have great ideas, and it only takes a few minutes to apply.

NanoDx

ASeq Newsletter • 43 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Nano Diagnostics started around 2010 as Biodirection and originally pursued a nanowire-based approach aimed at point-of-care concussion detection.
Improved biomarkers and competitors like Abbott now offer fast immunoassay TBI tests (cleared in 2023), making the concussion diagnostics market tougher for NanoDx.
Recent patents and company signals suggest NanoDx has moved away from its original nanowire focus and is emphasizing SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics, reflecting a broader industry shift away from nanowire approaches.

Roche's SBX Sequencer Pricing In May? $1B Revenue?

ASeq Newsletter • 36 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26

💼 Business Biotech

New details about Roche's Axelios SBX nanopore sequencer have surfaced and will be of interest to people tracking the platform.
The additional information was disclosed during Roche's full-year results conference call, indicating it came from an official company update.
The deeper write-up on these updates is behind a paywall and targeted at paid subscribers.

Biotech Startup Stats

Rough Diamonds • 20 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26

💼 Business Biotech

Most biotech startups either fail or lose value after IPO, with only a small share of currently trading firms showing positive long‑term returns; many poorly performing public companies may simply not have failed yet.
Location and company age strongly predict outcomes: firms based in biotech hubs (CA, MA, NY, NJ, PA) do much better, and newer firms are more likely to still be trading due to lifecycle effects.
Scientific focus and pipeline stage matter: biologics (especially antibodies), rare disease and immunology focuses, targets like PD‑1, and IPOing at Phase III are linked to acquisitions or positive returns, while "other" modalities (e.g., formulations, natural products) tend to underperform.

Acorn Genetics - Working Solid State Nanopores "Right Now"?

ASeq Newsletter • 29 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Biotech

Acorn Genetics says it is building solid-state nanopore DNA sequencing technology.
Solid-state nanopore sequencing has been extremely hard historically, with no clear proof-of-concept despite decades of work and hundreds of millions spent.
The company raised about $2M to build an alpha and has roadmap timing for a beta around now, but the small funding and the field’s challenges make the timeline and prospects uncertain.

Biotech

ChinaTalk • 681 implied HN points • 09 Jun 25

🕹 Technology Biotech

China's biotech industry has transformed from copying foreign drugs to developing innovative medications that compete globally. This shift shows that they are now making significant progress in drug discovery.
Companies like BeiGene and Legend Biotech have successfully created cancer therapies that are approved internationally, demonstrating China's growing capability in biopharmaceuticals and bringing new options to cancer patients worldwide.
New drugs from Chinese companies like Akeso are showing promise in clinical trials, potentially leading to breakthroughs in cancer treatment. This trend attracts global attention and investments, signaling a bright future for China's biotech sector.