Blog Archive
Explore all articles and insights about the bioeconomy, data science, and market trends.
2026
84% of ClinVar's Missense Records Are Still Uncertain. Illumina's SpliceAI2 Targets a Different Pile
ClinVar holds 2.4 million variants of uncertain significance, 52% of its records. Missense variants are 84% uncertain, intron variants 26%, canonical splice sites 11%. Illumina's new SpliceAI2 aims at the splicing slice of that gap.
By Martin DAVILA
KRAS G12D Went From 2 Trial Starts to 24 in One Year. Now 17 of This Year's 20 Are Phase 2 or 3
ClinicalTrials.gov shows trials listing KRAS G12D starting at 2 in 2023, 24 in 2024, and 20 so far in 2026, with 7 in Phase 3. The first RAS inhibitor for pancreatic cancer was approved on August 26.
By Martin DAVILA
Half of FDA's New Drugs Already Target Rare Diseases. The New Framework Aims at the Other 95%
FDA launched a Rare Disease Framework Initiative on October 14, saying only about 5% of rare conditions have an approved treatment. CDER's annual reports show orphan-designated drugs at 50% to 54% of novel approvals every year since 2021.
By Martin DAVILA
The Chemistry Nobel Honored a Niche: About 7 Autocatalysis Papers a Year Beside 2,000 on Enantioselective Synthesis
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric synthesis. PubMed shows a field of about 2,000 enantioselective papers a year around an autocatalysis niche of fewer than ten.
By Martin DAVILA
FDA Has Approved 46 Novel Drugs by October 9, Matching All of 2025
FDA's list of novel drug approvals shows 46 in 2026 through October 9. That equals the whole of 2025 and is 39% more than the same date last year. What the pace does and does not tell us.
By Martin DAVILA
Optogenetics Won the Nobel With 1,745 Papers a Year, but Only Nine Trials, All in the Eye
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to optogenetics. PubMed shows the field grew from 2 papers in 2006 to 1,745 in 2025, while ClinicalTrials.gov lists nine interventional optogenetic trials, all aimed at the retina.
By Martin DAVILA
Nearly 70% or 20% to 43%? How to Read Regeneron's Muscle Data for GLP-1 Users
Regeneron says trevogrumab preserved almost 70% of thigh muscle on semaglutide. The whole-body measure in the same trial shows 20% to 43%. Why both are right, and what is still unknown.
By Martin DAVILA
9 Billion Predictions, 4.6 Million Records: What AlphaGenome Atlas Can and Cannot Fill In
Google's AlphaGenome Atlas predicts all 9 billion single-letter changes in the human genome. ClinVar holds 4.6 million records, and 51.6% of them are of uncertain significance. What the atlas fills in, and what it leaves open.
By Martin DAVILA
The Exit Moved: $130 Billion of Biotech Acquisitions in Six Months, 11 IPOs in a Year
IQVIA counts $130 billion of biopharma M&A in the first half of 2026, 98% of all of 2025. With IPOs at 11 last year, acquirers have become the exit.
By Martin DAVILA
Premium Analysis: Two Molecules, 65% of Lilly's Revenue
Mounjaro and Zepbound earned $14.9 billion of Eli Lilly's $23.0 billion second-quarter 2026 revenue. What that concentration says about the GLP-1 wave and the bioeconomy.
By Martin DAVILA
A Genome Database Was Worth $6 Billion. It Sold for $305 Million.
23andMe genotyped more than 14 million people. Its market value peaked near $6 billion in 2021. In 2025 a nonprofit bought it out of bankruptcy for $305 million, about $22 per person.
By Martin DAVILA
The GLP-1 Gap Is Closing From the Outside
About 12% of US adults take a GLP-1 drug, against an estimated 2% in Europe. Yet Mounjaro now sells more outside the US than inside it. We pulled ten quarters from Eli Lilly's SEC filings.
By Martin DAVILA
What Readers Look Up: Ten Years of Wikipedia Attention to Biotechnology
Semaglutide went from 6,000 Wikipedia page views a year in 2016 to 2.7 million in 2024. CRISPR peaked in 2017 and has fallen 78%. A look at what the public reads about biotechnology.
By Martin DAVILA
What a Correct Variant Call Costs: From $0.67 to $8.49 Among Equally Accurate Models
On VariantBench the ten best AI configurations pass 40 to 50% of attempts. Their cost per correct answer ranges from $0.67 to $8.49, and the agent harness changes the bill as much as the model.
By Martin DAVILA
Science Is at Record Highs and Capital Is Not: Reading the 2030 Bioeconomy From the Data
We compared nine indicators with their own best year. Trial starts and structure releases are at records. Venture funding is at 61% of its peak and biotech IPOs at 11%.
By Martin DAVILA
The Genome Got 180,000 Times Cheaper. The Bottleneck Moved.
Sequencing a human genome fell from $95 million in 2001 to about $525 in 2022. GenBank now holds 8.2 trillion bases. We follow the cost curve and the archive to find where the bottleneck went.
By Martin DAVILA
Trials Do Not Grow Together: Bispecifics and CAR-T Climb While mRNA Falls Back
FDA approves about the same number of novel drugs every year. The pipeline underneath is changing: bispecific trials are up nearly 16-fold since 2015, while mRNA trial starts peaked in 2021.
By Martin DAVILA
AlphaFold Predicted 750 Times More Structures Than Experiments Solved in 50 Years
The Protein Data Bank holds 260,724 experimental structures. The AlphaFold database holds over 200 million predictions. Yet experimental releases hit a record in 2025. What that means for protein design.
By Martin DAVILA
From 104 IPOs to 11: How the Biotech Public Market Shrank to a Tenth of Its 2021 Size
Biotech IPOs on US exchanges fell from 104 in 2021 to 11 in 2025, below even the 2022 and 2023 trough. IPOs raised $3 billion in 2025, the lowest in ten years.
By Martin DAVILA
Biotech Venture Funding Is Back to $34 Billion, but the Checks Are Half the Size
PitchBook counts $33.8 billion across 1,171 biopharma venture deals in 2025, against $55.7 billion across 1,039 in 2021. The average round fell from about $54 million to about $29 million.
By Martin DAVILA
AI-Discovered Drugs Pass Phase I Often. Phase II Is Where the Test Starts.
A 2024 analysis found AI-discovered molecules succeed in 80 to 90% of Phase I trials but only about 40% of Phase II trials. The samples are small, and the gap says something about what AI has and has not solved.
By Martin DAVILA
Writing Genomes: What $40 Million Bought in 2010, and What Changed
Synthetic bacterial genomes grew about sevenfold from 2008 to 2019 and have stayed near 4 million bases. The race since then has been about rewriting the genetic code.
By Martin DAVILA
CRISPR's First Approval Did Not Set Off a Rush of New Trials
Casgevy won approval in late 2023 at $2.2 million per patient. ClinicalTrials.gov shows new gene-editing trials per year rising from 8 in 2016 to 34 in 2024, a steady climb that started before the approval.
By Martin DAVILA
How Big Is the US Bioeconomy? Even the Best Estimate Comes in Two Sizes
The National Academies and the Bureau of Economic Analysis cite $959 billion and $403 billion for the US bioeconomy in 2016. McKinsey forecasts $2 to $4 trillion a year. Why the numbers disagree.
By Martin DAVILA
Carbon Matches Evo 2 on Half of Six Tests. The Interesting Part Is the Tokenizer.
Hugging Face's open genomic model Carbon is said to match Evo 2 at far higher speed. Its own model card shows it ahead on three of six tasks and behind on three. The real story is how it reads DNA.
By Martin DAVILA
How to Read a Volcano Plot and a PCA Plot (With Simulated Data)
The two plots in almost every omics paper, explained with a labelled simulation: what each axis means, what to look for, and the three mistakes that mislead readers.
By Martin DAVILA
Premium Analysis: What FDA Approved in 2024, and Why the Mix Matters
FDA approved 50 novel drugs in 2024. Fifty-two percent were for rare diseases and 48% were first in class. What the mix says about where drug development is heading.
By Martin DAVILA