DIGITAL BIOLOGY
Features
Novo Nordisk names AWS its preferred cloud and AI partner
The companies have opened a joint innovation hub in London, bringing AWS engineers and scientists together with Novo Nordisk's research teams. Their goal is to shorten the path from drug target to first human dose. Novo Nordisk says the collaboration has already reduced clinical documentation time and helped more than 25,000 employees improve productivity; those benefits are company-reported.
Aureka raises $100 million to train biological foundation models
The Series B brings total funding to nearly $200 million. Aureka plans to use the proceeds for large-scale model training and to expand Lab-in-the-Loop, its experimental feedback system. That system links single-cell functional screening and high-throughput validation to model post-training. The company says pharmaceutical partnerships have generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue over the past two years.
Vivodyne reports annual capacity for experiments on 3.1 million lab-grown human tissues
The company says its 12 robotic HIVE laboratories use wafer-scale TissueDisks that grow hundreds of tissues at once. Eight of the largest pharmaceutical companies have paid for early access. Vivodyne reports 96% concordance in cellular composition between its lab-grown airway tissue and patient tissue, measured with Lin's concordance correlation coefficient. These are in vitro measurements, not clinical evidence.
Bruker takes a majority stake in organ-on-a-chip company MIMETAS
MIMETAS develops human tissue and disease models for drug testing and safety assessment. Its OrganoPlate platform grows microfluidic tissue cultures in a standard microtiter-plate format. Bruker plans to combine those models with its molecular analysis and imaging technologies. Financial terms were not disclosed, and MIMETAS will retain its brand and management.
Kyowa Kirin selects Benchling and Cognizant for research data platform deployment
Cognizant will handle setup, data migration and ongoing operations at Kyowa Kirin's Tokyo and Fuji research parks. Planned instrument connections would capture experimental data as structured, searchable records. Benchling is expected to provide AI and analytical tools for molecular design and analysis of accumulated experimental history. The announcement describes a planned implementation.