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What is Isomorphic Labs’ lead development program, and when might it reach the clinic?

Can a $50 billion valuation finally solve human disease? Sir Demis Hassabis is in talks to raise a monumental new round for Isomorphic Labs—taking AI-driven drug discovery from computer screens to human trials.

The Rise of Isomorphic Labs.

Founded in November 2021 as an Alphabet subsidiary spun out of Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs was created around an ambitious premise: leverage advanced computational models to revolutionize biotechnology and ultimately solve all human disease. Led by founder and CEO Sir Demis Hassabis—co-founder of DeepMind and co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—the London-headquartered firm has rapidly evolved from an ambitious research endeavor into an ultra-capitalized biotechnology power player.

Now, as Sir Demis Hassabis holds talks to raise new funding at a $50 billion valuation, Isomorphic stands on the precipice of its most critical evolution yet: proving whether its revolutionary computational designs can successfully translate into real-world human therapeutics.

Key Operational Pillars.

1. Breakthrough Technology Platform.

At the core of the company is the Isomorphic Labs.

Continue reading “What is Isomorphic Labs’ lead development program, and when might it reach the clinic?” | >

The leading theory of how life began just hit a snag

The origin of life, a continuing puzzle! See my blog posted on Big Think, with link at.

(https://www.searchforlifeintheuniverse.com/post/the-leading-…hit-a-snag)

Earth’s first primitive organisms may have originated at alkaline hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean several billion years ago, according to the leading theory. New research challenges the theory, causing some scientists to reconsider other hypotheses.

Boycott OpenAI, mathematicians say after ChatGPT solves more than 700 problems on its own

The Association for Human Mathematics has urged mathematicians to stop working with OpenAI after the company released findings on 377 maths problems and more than 700 files. The group says mathematicians did not ask for this work and has criticised OpenAI’s approach.

Scientists explore new frontier in autoimmune disease treatment by resetting ‘rogue’ cells

When your body’s immune cells attack you instead of protecting you, today’s treatments tamp down the friendly fire but they don’t fix what’s causing it. Now in dozens of studies, scientists are testing ways to reprogram patients’ out-of-whack immune systems.

IceCube is built on decades of research into tiny ‘ghost particles’ — but it was the first to find neutrinos coming from deep space

IceCube looks for high energy neutrinos from space. It joins the ranks of complementary experiments that study neutrinos originating closer to home.

Neutrons, rotating black holes, and a galactic PeVatron at the center of the Milky Way

Galactic black holes are cosmic mitochondria, powerhouses of the universe. Most of the energy these supermassive black holes produce comes from the material surrounding them: superheated plasma in their accretion disks interacting with tremendous magnetic fields. But there is a more direct way to extract energy from a black hole. It’s known as the Penrose process, and a new study asks whether we could discover a signature of this process.

First proposed by Roger Penrose in 1969, the mechanism describes how you could extract energy directly from a rotating black hole, thus decreasing its total mass. This is different from the usual mechanism in which black holes generate power as a byproduct of consuming matter and increasing mass. It relies on a feature of rotating black holes known as the ergosphere.

As a black hole rotates, it drags space around it. This frame-dragging effect is most powerful very close to the black hole. The ergosphere is a region around the black hole where the frame dragging is so strong you can’t counter it. Even if you had a spaceship capable of approaching the speed of light, you couldn’t overcome the rotating frame. You will rotate around the black hole no matter what. Because of this, the timey-wimey effects of relativity get a little mucky-wucky.

Vagus Nerve Stimulation Could Help New Skills Stick

Stimulating the vagus nerve after practice helped mice develop stronger long-term motor learning, revealing a potentially important window when the brain is still locking in a new skill. The effect was linked to rhythmic changes in brain blood vessels, hinting that body-to-brain signals may help prepare the brain for lasting change.

GTA 1’s Vehicle Physics Are Now Playable In Your Browser

Patrick Kerr, a former programmer on the original Grand Theft Auto, has published a playable physics demo that eventually became the game’s vehicle system.

Learn more and play it here.

Former Grand Theft Auto programmer Patrick Kerr has shared his system and explained how it works.

First Nuclear Clocks Kick Off a Precision Race

Clocks have always been about more than keeping time. In the 18th century, marine chronometers helped solve the “longitude problem,” enabling sailors to determine their ships’ east–west position at sea [1]. A new generation of ultraprecise clocks may now help researchers navigate uncharted territory beyond the standard model of particle physics. Building on decades of development, two independent teams—one led by Thorsten Schumm of the Vienna University of Technology and Ekkehard Peik of PTB, the German National Metrology Institute [2] and the other by Shiqian Ding of Tsinghua University in China [3]—have reported in Nature the first operating nuclear clocks. Their ticks are set by a transition in the atomic nucleus rather than by transitions of the electrons surrounding it.

Peik says he was “absolutely delighted” by the rapid progress and surprised by the clock’s robustness. Ding says he felt humbled to see decades of work come together in an operating clock. “Two years earlier, that still felt almost too ambitious to imagine,” he says.

These clocks don’t yet match the stability of today’s best atomic clocks, but they hold promise for both practical applications and tests of fundamental physics. Nuclear clocks could eventually become compact and robust, doing away with the ultrahigh-vacuum chambers and elaborate laser-cooling and trapping systems required by today’s most precise atomic clocks.

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