The Ott Lab

Interested in learning more about our lab? We have a shiny, new, up-to-date website where you can see everything that we're currently working on. Check it out! ottlab.gladstone.org

New research emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing surprising connections between viruses, inflammation, and cancer progression. Gladstone Investigator Melanie Ott (@TheOttLab) comments on these new findings in @latimes. lat.ms/4fSOnsr

Together with my co-founders Michael @MichaelPoli6, Stefano @Massastrello and Armin @athmsx, I am excited to announce @RadicalNumerics is emerging from stealth with a $50M seed round to build general biological intelligence. We’re also sharing an early preview of our new model Omnii, the most powerful genome language model to date. Omnii preview link: radicalnumerics.ai/blog/radical-n… At Radical Numerics, our mission is to master the code of life, and to drive the frontier of biological AI for both design and defense. This is our dual mandate, which comes from something our own team helped make possible. Our founding team trained Evo and Evo 2, the largest biological AI models (40B params) trained on DNA sequences. Trillions of tokens across all of life, from microbes to mammals. It’s fully open source, and created the field now known as generative genomics. Last year, scientists used Evo to generate the world’s first complete genome from scratch using AI. Turns out it was a bacteriophage—a type of virus. It functioned in the real world, and in this case it was harmless. But for us, it was a clear turning point. It showed that AI is no longer just analyzing biology. It is on the cusp of generating functional lifeforms. Eventually, AI will have the power to design and control life itself. That should make all of us incredibly excited, and incredibly uneasy. (Anyone can design DNA with a new function, and have it synthesized and delivered, like something from Amazon Prime). The same technology that will help us cure cancer is the very technology that might create the next global pandemic, or worse, allow the creation of bioweapons that can wipe out populations. We believe these forces are inseparable. If you work on the frontier of biology, you have to build technology to safeguard it from its misuse. Existing biosecurity tools are sorely losing the arms race, relying on outdated “have I seen this exact thing before?” style algorithms. We founded Radical Numerics to turn the tide. And we can’t do that by training on textbooks and natural language. We must understand the language of biology from the raw physical data itself, to reason across every molecule and modality, from DNA to proteins. The next frontier for AI goes far beyond chatbots or video generators to models that can understand and engineer life. Today, we’re previewing Omnii, which is already far surpassing Evo 2, and will continue improving as we scale and add new modalities (training now). 1. For human health, Omnii can read and write whole genomes (more on writing later). It’s state of the art (SOTA) on detecting causal variants for disease, and can rank Alzheimer's mutations zero-shot. We’re partnering with a diagnostics company to use Omnii for early cancer detection (pancreatic and multi-cancer). 2. For defense, Omnii is SOTA at detecting AI-generated pathogens. We benchmarked existing detection tools, and they simply can’t detect the AI-generated ones (“deepfake viruses”). We’re partnering with a US national lab to pilot Omnii for detecting the next pandemic, both natural and AI-generated. We have a data center full of Blackwells in construction now to build the most powerful biological AI models ever. This mission takes a new kind of AI lab that can actually scale on physical, biological data: new alignment research (mid/post training), scaling long context, building out mech interp teams to dissect what these models learn, new architectures and systems designs, all from the ground up. Our team is made up of AI researchers and scientists from top labs and institutions (e.g. Stanford, MIT, Google DeepMind), but more importantly, we all share the belief that this is the most important challenge of our lifetime. If you feel similarly, we are hiring. We aim to bring the brightest minds in AI and science together to save lives. Thanks to our partners on this journey, led by Emergence Capital @emergencecap, with Obvious Ventures @obviousvc, Triatomic @TriatomicCap , and Patrick Collison @patrickc. Our advisors include Eric Horvitz @erichorvitz, CSO of Microsoft, Chris Re @HazyResearch of Stanford, George Church @geochurch of Harvard, and Andrew Weber @AndyWeberNCB, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs. Fortune article: fortune.com/2026/06/15/exc… Jobs: radicalnumerics.ai/join-us

A team of Gladstone scientists—including Katie Pollard, Melanie Ott, Seth Shipman, and Sukrit Silas—will lead one of three new national centers dedicated to accelerating the development of phage therapy. @TheOttLab @seth_shipman bit.ly/4ejof8I

🚨 NEW PUBLICATION 🚨 "Programmable kinetic barcoding for multiplexed RNA detection with Cas13a" in @natBME, with work from @TheOttLab. go.nature.com/4t8O2Vm

Melanie Ott and Nadia Roan are central to a groundbreaking effort to create the world’s first map of how HIV affects the immune system at a single-cell level. @TheOttLab @amfAR bit.ly/4cgJOoh

In our new work published in @natBME in collaboration with @TheOttLab and @Doudna_lab, we introduce "interfering" guide RNAs (igRNAs) for CRISPR-Cas13a that regulate enzyme activity after activation. Congratulations to all the authors! nature.com/articles/s4155…

We honor the life of J. Michael Bishop, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped transform our understanding of cancer and opened new paths for treatment. His legacy will continue to inspire generations of scientists and clinicians. Rest in peace.

From chronic treatment to true cure: Melanie Ott (@TheOttLab) makes the case that controlling HIV isn’t the finish line—it’s just the beginning. Read more: bit.ly/4rWC8hx

Once a godsend, antiretroviral therapy is not what we should settle on. The time has come to finally cure HIV/AIDS. Read more in this commentary from Melanie Ott (@TheOttLab) bit.ly/4rWC8hx

Excited about a future in STEM? Applications are open for Gladstone’s 2026 PUMAS Summer Internship Program! PUMAS is a unique opportunity for community college students to gain real-world experience in biomedical research. Learn more on our website ➡️ bit.ly/2UVIaST

Tune in for our event on TikTok LIVE: “HIV Cure Lab Tour + Q&A"! 📆 Monday, December 1, 2025 at 10am PT 📍 Live on TikTok via @RaifDerrazi 🔗 Register: tiktok.com/live/event/757…

🚨 PUBLICATION🚨 "HIV-Induced T Cell Quiescence and the Origins of Viral Latency" in @NatImmunol From the @TheOttLab nature.com/articles/s4159…

Virologists need to reclaim the gain of function debate from politicians and set up streamlined international guidelines to work on viruses with pandemic potential. Read more in this @Nature opinion piece by @TheOttLab, @Virus_Immunity, and myself: nature.com/articles/d4158…

The Gladstone Institute of Virology has taken on a new name: the Gladstone Infectious Disease Institute. Check it out here: gladstone.org/news/beyond-vi…

Check out Dr. Melanie Ott's recent opinion piece on the SF Standard: sfstandard.com/opinion/2025/0…

Congrats Fran!

Thank you for supporting the next wave of HIV researchers. Because of you, amfAR’s 2025 Mathilde Krim Fellows are advancing bold ideas that bring us closer to a cure. Hear why your support matters.

Congratulations to Julia Prigann for being awarded the 2025 CFAR Excellence in Basic/Translational Science Award! cfar.ucsf.edu/user/11703

We are delighted that we could help with this work. Check it out here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lEffL7PXuF0y

Scientists from Gladstone and @UCSF have developed drug candidates that could prevent future coronavirus pandemics. Read more about this recent study: bit.ly/4cHKGSC @ucsfpharmacy @UCSFMedicine @ScienceAdvances @TheOttLab @KroganLab @QBI_UCSF