Phenomenal Decoding Bio article by Zahra Khwaja and Matthew Nemeth about Benjamine Liu and Linhao Zhang's "AI-native biopharma" company, Formation Bio.

Leveraging AI and a partners network, Formation Bio has really nailed the arbitrage opportunity that is coming out of late discovery (pre-IND or IND-ready) to early development (end of Phase 1). Undeveloped and terminated assets are everywhere, in an Anna Karenina kind of way (each languishing for its own, idiosyncratic reasons), with a few categories such as "lack of strategic fit", "insufficient funds", "portfolio decisions." Finding the right ones, developing hypotheses, predicting success (I would narrow it down to Phase 2 success) negotiating deal terms, designing and executing clinical plans, accelerating enrollment, these are all hard things requiring a wide range of disciplines. But that is where a disproportionate amount of value is created.

The Decoding Bio article provides a great overview of the underlying business and technical architecture, plus a seriously insightful interview of Formation's CTO Dan Neil, a veteran form Benevolent and Tessera Therapeutics. I will single out one piece that resonates with me, but the whole interview is a treasure:

"We’re moving internal knowledge into queryable systems so teams can see what’s been done before, what data exists, and what insights have already been generated. Technology supports that, but it only works if the culture expects information to flow."

The last sentence is usually a death sentence (pun intended after the fact) in typical organizations. Being able to build this kind of culture from the ground up makes biopharma startups formidable competitors. One reason I love Formation Bio is that it is the natural complement to Chorus, the early development unit I helped design at Eli Lilly and Company, with a similar focus on an information and holistic, portfolio-wide driven culture.