Next Level

I wish it weren't the case, but @LifeSciVC is wrong about this. The crisis in biotech startups is not just "biotech being cyclical" - you can see clearly that the rise in Chinese startups is not cyclical over the last 25 years - it's spiking up in the last 10 years (see chart below from @AsimovPress). The great article in @WSJ by @jaredmitovich does capture reality for scientists in Boston -- it's impossible for them to get jobs in biotech right now. wsj.com/tech/biotech/p… This has little to do with Kendall Square building too much lab space or COVID-driven boom times in biotech as Bruce suggests. Those happened too over the last 5 years, but the reason it is impossible for scientists to get jobs in biotech right now is that the center of gravity for biotech startups is moving to China. Things we should do to fix this: 1) Get fucking competitive US biotech scientists, academics, and entrepreneurs need to get out of the funk! There's a lot of defeatist attitudes -- "things are changing and I don't like change" about how the Trump administration has approached science. Get over it! I know folks like @mkratsios47 @sriramk @HHS_Jim @SecretaryWright aren't trying to stop US science -- but they do want to change how we do science with things like Project Genesis that bring our new AI datacenter horsepower into science. We also got into an attitude of WFH and a lower intensity during COVID across all of tech that I'm happy to see the AI crew in Silicon Valley has broken us out of -- but we need to bring that intensity back in biotech startups too or we deserve to lose it to China. Being intense about entrepreneurship is kinda our thing in the US - let's not forget it. 2) Block outbound US investment in Chinese biotech startups This is not impossible! In fact it just happened in the NDAA that passed 2 weeks ago with the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act of 2025 (COINS Act) arnoldporter.com/en/perspective… US biotech VCs (including our leaders like @LifeSciVC and @PeterKolchinsky -- I'm not trying to single them out, basically everyone is doing it) are running the same playbook that got run in tech VC with funds like Sequoia China 20 years ago. I get why! It's a great ROI to invest in Chinese biotech startups right now. There's no way to pressure one VC fund to opt-out, that's just bad business for them. But USG should add biotechnology to the COINS list of critical technologies alongside artificial intelligence (AI), quantum , semiconductors, high-performance computing/supercomputing and hypersonic systems that are on there today. Would love to see legislators who care about US biotechnology for national & economic security step up here like @SenToddYoung, @SenatorWarner, @SenPadilla, @RepBice, @RepHoulahan , @PeteSessions, @RepGusBilirakis, @sethmoulton, @JakeAuch and @RoKhanna -- leaders from the new Biotech Caucus: houlahan.house.gov/news/documents… and @biotech_gov ! If you are a scientist/entrepreneur in biotech, contact them and donate to them! They are stepping up to protect our industry in the US. 3) Fix US clinical trial regulations so we are just as fast as China and Australia. Changes we should make are well outlined by @rtnarch here: x.com/rtnarch/status… I believe @DrMakaryFDA is the right leader to fix this -- this is an @US_FDA that isn't afraid to make changes. Let them know we need these changes to keep up! 4) Leverage AI and Autonomous Labs to change the fundamental ROI for biosciences lab work in the US. Better trial regs aren't the only reason China is winning in biotech right now -- the other reason is they now have more trained lab bench scientists than we do in the US who work for lower salaries (thanks to CCP making investments in bioscience academia/R&D the last 20 years). This labor arbitrage was the playbook WuXi used in chemistry in pharma and it's coming now for biotech -- and not just for CRO work, but for all of of discovery science. The way out of this is to automate US lab work with autonomous labs. Paradoxically, lab automation will will increase scientist jobs in US, not reduce them! See the the 1951 IBM Electronic Calculator ad I attached below -- that calculator did not reduce engineer headcount by 150 by taking away their slide rules! We had a huge increase in both the number and the value of engineering jobs! The ROI on computation was wildly better after automation than when it was done manually -- same will happen with autonomous labs. We need to put down our slide rules in science (the pipettes and lab benches) and embrace total automation -- this is possible now with breakthroughs in AI and robotics, I wrote more about it here: ginkgo.bio/autonomous-lab Then US will be competing with China on whose scientists have the best ideas, commercial translation, and risk capital access -- not who has the lowest cost scientific hands. Finally, this is a national security priority for the United States. The reason is that biopharma is the only working market today for genetic engineering (i.e. "biotechnology") which is a technology that is as general and as important as computers (DNA and computer code are human's only two code-based technologies!). If we lose the drug startup ecosystem to China, we lose the frontier of designing DNA to China. I don't want to live in a future where democracies don't lead in developing the most important technology in human history. We're made of biology, our food is made of biology, our life support on this planet (and on the future on Mars, too) is provided by biology. We cannot take our eye of the ball here. The next 12 months matter to keep this technology healthy and leading in the US, we need to get to work. Hope you all (and biotech) have an awesome 2026! 🎉🧬

Marc Andreessen: Revolutionary technologies were often viewed as “trivialities” or “jokes” “If you read history, the great innovations of the past are now well understood as being very important. In almost every case, they were not widely understood as such at the time. In fact, I would assert that they were often actually viewed as trivialities or jokes.” He gives three examples: 1. The telephone. “When Thomas Edison was first working on the telephone, the assumption of the use case motivating his early work was the idea that telegraph operators needed to be able to talk to each other. It was considered implausible that you would have a system that would let any ordinary person pick up the telephone and talk to another person - that was clearly impossible… Completely missing the larger opportunity.” 2. The Internet. “I have personal experience with this one. The Internet was laughed at. It was heaped with scorn from 1993 to 1997-98. In fact, those of you who were in the industry at the time will remember the New York Times had a reporter on staff named Peter Lewis… I’m convinced he was specifically hired by the editors to just write negative stories about the Internet. It was all he did, and it was always the Internet was never going to be a consumer medium. The Internet is not nearly as big as these people think. Nobody is ever going to trust the internet for e-commerce.” 3. The car. “The car was absolutely viewed as a triviality and a toy when it first emerged. In fact, J.P. Morgan himself refused to invest in Ford Motor Company with the response that it’s just a toy for rich people, which is in fact what it was at the time. If you had one of the first cars, you had to be a rich person. You had to have a driver. You often actually had to also have a stoker with your early cars to keep the engine going. And then you also had to travel with a full-time mechanic because the thing would break down every three miles.” Marc concludes: “The great innovations of the present, I believe, are virtually guaranteed to be viewed as trivial and to be viewed as jokes. I think history 50 to 100 years from now will enshroud them in legend. In our time, they won’t be recognized as such. Of course, in the future, when they become legends, our descendants will themselves have their own trivial innovations to laugh at.” Video source: @MilkenInstitute (2013)

New Lancet data on GLP-1 agonists 👇 A new paper in The Lancet eClinicalMedicine shows that when GLP-1 therapy is stopped, most people regain the lost weight and lose metabolic benefits. In practice, this means GLP-1s function as chronic, often lifelong therapy not a temporary fix. To be clear, GLP-1 agonists are improving the health of many people, especially patients with obesity, type 2 diabetes and high cardiometabolic risk. For these individuals, weight loss can be genuinely life-changing. The concern is not appropriate medical use but indiscriminate use. With millions already taking these drugs and numbers rising rapidly (specially with the new pill format), many users are not patients in the classical sense, but generally healthy or mildly overweight individuals. In this context, the risk–benefit balance changes. Once started, most users will need to stay on GLP-1s indefinitely or face significant rebound effects, often returning to baseline or worse. As an important caveat: GLP-1s improve metabolic control, but they do not rebuild metabolic capacity. Without resistance training, meaningful metabolic work (Zone 2 and above), and adequate protein intake, long-term use may promote lean mass loss, low energy flux and increased frailty risk with aging. In addition, we still lack long-term data on potential pancreatic, thyroid, and central neurotransmitter effects. GLP-1s are powerful tools, but not a standalone solution. Long-term success requires pairing pharmacology with training and metabolic resilience. IMHO: based on current clinical and research evidence, it is now urgent that clinicians clearly inform users that starting GLP-1 therapy likely means committing to long-term or lifelong use, with all the consequences that may entail. thelancet.com/journals/eclin…