Deep Future What is TechBio? – Aneil Mallavarapu
Sep 21, 2025
Aneil Mallavarapu, founder of Humain Ventures and former computational biologist, dives into the revolutionary world of TechBio, where biology meets AI. He explains how TechBio differs from traditional biotech and unpacks exciting case studies like Unnatural Products’ innovative peptide platform. Aneil discusses the differences between mechanistic and data-driven models of cell biology, the growing importance of non-invasive therapeutics, and even explores the future of brain interfaces and consciousness—highlighting the game-changing prospects of integrating AI with biology.
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Biology As An Engineering Platform
- TechBio reframes biology as an engineering platform enabled by AI and computational scale.
- This shifts focus from discovery to building new, engineered biological functions at scale.
AI Overcomes Mechanistic Limits
- AI lets us optimize biological functions by learning patterns from data rather than solving quantum mechanics.
- That enables making molecules and proteins we couldn't design by first-principles alone.
Unnatural Products Case Study
- Unnatural Products arose from Santa Cruz research to make macrocyclic peptides at scale.
- Their platform creates hard-to-design "Goldilocks" drugs faster than big pharma teams.
