Using the immune system to cure disease | YC S21
San Francisco, CA
Joined April 2021
- Tweets22
- Following40
- Followers155
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Jason Lew is joining @ParallelBio as Chief AI Officer.
AI drug discovery still learns from animals, yet 95% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans. We’re generating the human data AI needs.
businesswire.com/news/home/2…
The FDA just removed references to animal testing from its regulations.
The next step is proving which human models predict patient outcomes. Parallel Bio has been ready for this moment for a long time.
hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-accel…
Parallel Bio retweeted
Organoids are so cool. They are tiny 3D tissues that mimic features of human organs. E.g. cardiac organoids beat spontaneously and immune organoids can produce antibody responses. Great post by @annasofialesiv on their potential to transform drug development.
Parallel Bio retweeted
what if the cost of drug development followed the cost curve of mass to orbit? what might it take to flip the success rate of successful trials from 5% to 95% I wrote about organoids and how they might help us tackle the biggest cost center in getting drugs to market.
"[Animal testing] has never worked, and it will never work."
20 years ago, 6 healthy volunteers nearly died in a clinical trial.
In a new @NatureBiotech feature, our co-founders explain why animal testing is broken.
Read more: nature.com/articles/s41587-0…
Most AI in drug discovery is trained on animal data. Garbage in, garbage out.
Co-founder Robert DiFazio joined @sophiadew on @MTSLive to talk about how the industry is setting itself up for failure, and why human-first drug discovery is the fix.
Parallel Bio retweeted
Parallel Bio Cofounder Robert DiFazio on the AI problem in drug discovery:
"What's interesting about AI is it's a very one-sided conversation. Everybody's focused on the frontier models, which are incredibly exciting and powerful, but people forget the other half, which is data. It's the same as with original computers, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. You could have the world's most powerful computer, but if you're feeding it garbage, that's what comes out."
"A potential issue with AI in a lot of areas is that these models are incredibly powerful, and pharma is racing to adopt AI, but they're still training AI on animal data. The issue isn't the models. The issue is that they're still using animals."
"So for AI to deliver on its promise in biology, doing all the things people describe, which I think is very much possible, we have to have better data. That's the main goal of the company, to produce accurate and diverse human data at an industrial scale."
Congress understands what traditional pharma does not: animal models are a bad predictor of human biology.
The House passed FDA Modernization Act 3.0, telling FDA to update rules that default to animal testing.
Parallel Bio's been building for this shift since day one.
95%+ drugs that pass animal testing still fail in human trials. Our co-founders explain why – and what's replacing animal models today – in a new article for the @wef .
Read the full piece: weforum.org/stories/emerging…
Thanks for the shoutout, @SynBioBeta! 🙏 Excited to bring our computational and biological teams together under one roof. And a warm welcome to our five new advisors joining us across immunology, AI, and drug development.
linkedin.com/posts/john-cumb…
Parallel Bio is a 2026 @WEF Technology Pioneer.
We're building the future of drug discovery with human models instead of animal models: 87% predictive accuracy instead of 3%. That's the kind of science that makes the list.
→ wef.ch/techpioneers26
#TechPioneers26
"By focusing on the immune system and tying it to the brain, the heart, the lungs, the gut — we have the piece of the puzzle everybody else was ignoring."
@SFBusinessTimes sat down with our co-founders on why the immune system is the key to making drugs actually work for humans.
Article: bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco…
Blog: blog.parallel.bio/were-re-pl…
95%+ of drugs that work in animals fail in humans.
So why test in animals when you can build something better?
Parallel Bio builds human models to predict how drugs will actually behave in people.
Follow along + check out our site to learn more. 👋
Parallel Bio retweeted
New frontiers #3 - axial.substack.com/p/axial-n…
1. ADCs
2. Cultured meats
3. Phenotypic screening
4. Industrial enzymes
5. Chemokines
6. Building the US-version of WuXi
7. Infectious disease
8. Immunometabolism
9. Fast following in drug development
10. Single-cell sequencing
Parallel Bio retweeted
The @califesciences Fall FAST 2021 program welcomes six startups from SOCAL, who will receive intensive coaching and advisory services from our network of business experts.
Welcome Disati Medical, JUAD NGNE, NanoPharma Solutions, OncoXome, Parallel Bio, and V-Flow Medical.
Parallel Bio retweeted
Parallel Bio is putting the immune system in a dish to improve drug discovery. The duo founded Parallel Bio in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and started developing an immune organoid to fill a significant gap in disease modeling. #LongLA
bit.ly/3BMFdWO
Parallel Bio retweeted
YC S21's Parallel Bio created a human 'immune system in a dish' to discover drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients.
fiercebiotech.com/biotech/pa…
