Roman Kasianov
Covers AI in drug discovery, digital pathology, and translational R&D, editor of "Where Tech Meets Bio"; oversees company profiles, partnerships, and core operations at BiopharmaTrend.
Recent articles from Roman
Recursion Completes Whole-Genome Microglia Map With Roche and Genentech
Recursion announces the acceptance of its whole-genome Microglia Map by Roche and Genentech, marking the culmination of a three-year collaboration focused on decoding microglial cell biology.
The milestone triggered a $30 million payment to Recursion, bringing total cash inflows from …
Flagship's New AI Covalent Chemistry Startup; $50M Commitment and Pfizer Program
Flagship Pioneering announced Expedition Medicines after three years of internal development, committing $50 million to scale a quantum-chemistry-driven generative platform for covalent small-molecule discovery, with programs in oncology, immunology, and other well-defined diseases. Expedition, founded in 2022, has begun …
Iambic’s AI-Designed Cancer Drug Shows Early Clinical Activity
Iambic Therapeutics presented new data from its ongoing Phase 1/1b trial of IAM1363 at the 2025 ESMO Congress, showing anti-tumor activity in heavily pretreated patients with HER2-driven cancers, including those previously treated with T-DXd and tucatinib. The AI-designed small molecule …
AstraZeneca and AI-Powered Immune Mapping Company Immunai Sign Up To $85M IBD Target Agreement
Immunai has signed an agreement with AstraZeneca to develop a therapeutic target for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), marking a shift from their existing oncology-focused collaboration started in 2022. The deal is valued at up to $85 million and grants …
Sanofi Licenses BenchSci’s Neurosymbolic AI for Global Preclinical R&D
Sanofi has signed a three-year license agreement with Toronto-based BenchSci to deploy the ASCEND platform across its global preclinical research teams. The partnership marks a move to embed neurosymbolic AI into core R&D operations, offering scientists and contractors at Sanofi …
AI Model Built on Transformer Architecture Maps 1,300 Mouse Brain Regions in Data-Driven Atlas
Researchers at UCSF and the Allen Institute have developed a transformer-based AI model CellTransformer that maps 1,300 brain regions and subregions in the mouse brain, including previously uncharted subregions. The model was applied to large-scale spatial transcriptomics datasets, results were …
AstraZeneca Signs $555 Million AI Deal For CRISPR Therapies
AstraZeneca agreed to a collaboration worth up to $555m in regulatory and commercial milestones with San Francisco–based Algen Biotechnologies, securing exclusive rights to develop and commercialise therapies from CRISPR gene-editing technology; AstraZeneca is not taking an equity stake. The …
Human Cells Edited at Megabase Scale With Bridge Recombinases
Researchers report in Science a genome-editing approach that rearranges long stretches of human DNA—insertions, deletions, and inversions—within regions up to about one megabase (with demonstrations of ~920 kb inversions and ~130 kb deletions), with reported insertion efficiencies up to 20% …
Merck Expands Variational AI Collaboration To Up-To-$349M Deal On Two Small-Molecule Targets
Merck converted an earlier evaluation of Variational AI’s Enki platform into a collaboration to generate and optimize small-molecule candidates for two undisclosed, Merck-selected targets. The agreement includes an undisclosed upfront and milestones totaling up to $349 million; Merck receives exclusive …
Salt AI Raises $10M for Drag-and-Drop Platform to Build AI Workflows in Life Sciences
Salt AI closed a $10 million round led by Morpheus Ventures, with Struck Capital, Marbruck Investments, and CoreWeave participating. The company plans to expand deployments with biopharma and healthcare customers and scale AI engineering. The platform is a visual-first, code-capable …