Roman Kasianov

Director, Head of Content at BiopharmaTrend

Biotech business developer with a foundation in psychology and PR. Facilitating collaborations, connecting innovation with effective communication in publishing and analytics.

Author in
AI & Digital Bioeconomy & Society Startups & Deals NeuroTech Clinical Trials Biotech Manufacturing & Pharma 4.0 Tools & Methods HealthTech Aging & Longevity Contract Research Novel Therapeutics Marketing & E-commerce

Recent articles from Roman

AI Drug Developer Insilico Medicine Readies Brain-Penetrant Therapy For Parkinson’s Trials

Insilico Medicine reports it has finished IND-enabling work for ISM8969, an oral, blood-brain-barrier-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitor and aims to file an IND in Q4 2025 to start clinical evaluation in Parkinson’s disease. In preclinical MPTP models, the candidate reportedly produced dose-dependent …

Modi Ventures Closes $88M Second Fund for AI–Biology Convergence Investments

Modi Ventures has raised $88 million for its second fund, bringing total committed capital to over $134 million. The Houston-based venture firm, launched in 2022, invests in companies and funds operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence, biology, and …

Latent Labs Launches Web-Based AI Tool for Custom Protein Generation

Five months after emerging from stealth with $50 million in funding, Latent Labs has launched a web-based AI model Latent-X for programmable protein design. The release marks a shift from closed, proprietary pipelines to accessible tools aimed at academic and …

Japan’s Elix Launches AI Drug Discovery Platform Trained on Confidential Pharma Data via Federated Learning

Tokyo-based Elix (founded 2016) has launched Elix Discovery, an AI drug discovery platform powered by federated learning models trained on proprietary compound data from 16 pharmaceutical companies. The platform is the first commercial deployment to result from Japan’s AMED-backed …

Xaira Therapeutics Appoints Biotech Exec Behind Belharra and Ambys as President and COO to Scale AI-Driven Drug Discovery Platform

Xaira Therapeutics, the AI-native biotech launched in 2024 with over $1 billion in funding, has appointed biotech executive Jeff Jonker as President and Chief Operating Officer. Jonker will report to CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne and oversee operational functions as Xaira …

AbbVie Acquires Capstan Therapeutics for $2.1B, Gaining In Vivo CAR-T Platform Targeting Autoimmune Diseases

AbbVie announced a definitive agreement to acquire Capstan Therapeutics for up to $2.1 billion in cash, gaining access to its targeted lipid nanoparticle (tLNP) platform for in vivo cell engineering and its lead candidate, CPTX2309. The platform enables mRNA delivery …

Chai Discovery Releases All-Atom Foundation Model for Zero-Shot Antibody Design with 16–20% Hit Rates

Chai Discovery has released Chai-2, a generative molecular design model for zero-shot antibody and binder discovery. The model is capable of designing fully de novo CDRs based solely on a given epitope and target structure, without reliance on existing …

Arc Institute Opens Virtual Cell Challenge With $175K in AI Benchmarking Prizes

The Arc Institute has launched the Virtual Cell Challenge, a new open competition to benchmark computational models that predict how human cells respond to genetic perturbations. Announced today and published in Cell (Vol. 188, Issue 13), the …

SandboxAQ Releases Public Database Containing 5.2 Million Synthetic Protein-Ligand Structures

SandboxAQ has launched what it claims is the largest public dataset of protein-ligand complexes with associated binding affinity data. The database, called SAIR (Structurally Augmented IC50 Repository), contains approximately 5.2 million synthetic 3D structures covering over 1 million …

DeepMind Introduces AlphaGenome for Predicting Effects of Human DNA Variants

A new AI model from Google DeepMind, called AlphaGenome, has been released in preview for non-commercial research, offering a high-resolution, long-context DNA sequence model designed to predict the regulatory effects of genetic variants at scale.