GoKawiil
Tech News
Google DeepMind has released AlphaGenome 2, a successor to its AlphaGenome genome-prediction model, trained on more than 100 million individual cell profiles across 68 tissues. The model predicts how genetic variants affect specific cell types and states rather than cells broadly, and DeepMind says it identifies nearly twice as many expression-changing variants as its prior best model.
Researchers at UC San Diego report identifying a compound that can neutralize Naegleria fowleri, the amoeba responsible for a rare but often fatal brain infection, faster than existing treatments. The compound reportedly showed lower toxicity in lab testing compared with current drugs used against the pathogen.
The OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit created in October 2025 during OpenAI's governance restructuring, has begun distributing part of its committed $25 billion in philanthropic funding. Recent grants include a $125 million package for open health and life-sciences data, covering $40 million for a University of North Carolina cancer vaccine project, $500,000 to repurpose data from failed biotech firms, and $15 million for research on drug transport across biological membranes, following an earlier $100 million commitment to Alzheimer's disease research. Jacob Trefethen, the foundation's head of life sciences, says this is an early phase of a broader, faster-moving funding effort.