iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 02/10/2026

Can we switch off diseases? siRNA drugs are, in my view and @jacobtref.bsky.social’s too, one of the most exciting developments in medicine. So we decided to do an episode!

open.spotify.com

Can we switch off diseases?

Hard Drugs · Episode

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Nature @nature.com · 30/09/2026

The OpenAI Foundation — the charity arm of the AI behemoth — has so far committed to giving away at least $25 billion. The foundation's life sciences lead speaks to Nature about its ambitions to cure disease. go.nature.com/4d9IHYP

go.nature.com

How to spend $25 billion on science: OpenAI’s staggeringly rich research charity gets under way

Jacob Trefethen, who leads life sciences at the OpenAI Foundation, speaks to Nature about the organization’s ambitions to cure disease.

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I started a blog in 2024, with a post arguing society is not focused on some of the most important technical problems. Today, I posted an update on the ten technologies I wrote about. Nine of the ten are still unavailable. But I feel differently about that now: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/halfway/

blog.jacobtrefethen.com

Halfway to 5 years

I started this blog in February 2024, with a post about February 2029. Reviewing at the halfway point: nine of the ten technologies I wrote about are still unavailable, and we're not close on most of ...

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 17/08/2026

It's finally here! I gave a TED talk in April in Vancouver, and it was released online today. You can watch it here: ted.com/talks/saloni... I've also adapted it into an article, which was published last week: worksinprogress.co/issue/future...

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Adam Phillippy @aphillippy.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

For the past 30 years, “whole-genome sequencing” has been a misnomer. Today the T2T Consortium publishes a dozen papers heralding a future of truly complete genomes for humans and nearly any vertebrate 👨‍🔬🐒🐦🐀🦒🐎🫏🐹🐟 (sorry, no salamanders): www.cell.com/consortium/t... 🧵[1/15]

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 24/07/2026

New episode of HARD DRUGS! GLP1 drugs have transformed obesity & diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. They're far from the only drug with multiple uses. But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn about new uses.

open.spotify.com

Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?

Hard Drugs · Episode

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Theo Sanderson @theo.io · 28/05/2026

who knew that availability of tree bark was a bottleneck for vaccine manufacturing

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 27/05/2026

Guys, how do you invent a vaccine? Or even wilder, how do you invent a vaccine during your PhD?! In a new episode of Hard Drugs, we talked to someone who did just that: @kat-a-collins.bsky.social! Plus: • Why did the first malaria vaccine take so long? • Could we make better vaccines today?

open.spotify.com

Inventing the second malaria vaccine with Katharine Collins

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 02/03/2026

Finished listening to this excellent episode. Great exercise in triangulation of different lines of evidence! So should you be taking statins? Maybe! Might make sense to get your cholersterol levels checked!

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Darakhshan Nehal @darakhshann.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

*Any weekend plan* Me:

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Main goal of podcast achieved ✅ Hope you enjoy the new episode! open.spotify.com/episode/792E...

open.spotify.com

Should everyone be taking statins?

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 12/01/2026

Wooohooo, our podcast Hard Drugs now has listeners in 100 countries! 🥳 Now's the time to share that when we brainstorming the name, @jacobtref.bsky.social suggested adding the subtitle 'by two softies' 😆

Me and Jacob holding ice creams and smiling

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Darakhshan Nehal @darakhshann.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

*30 minutes in* **....people infected with the virus have about 500 quadrillion particles of viral surface proteins circulating in the antibodies during an infection.** Jacob: That's...that's a lot. I am no mathematician. 🤣

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 23/12/2025

If you have a long drive or flight coming up, I recommend our latest Hard Drugs episode! The story of developing the hep B vaccine is wild, and it was very fun to record. This episode also contains the most swearing.

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

So far this is the Hard Drugs episode I personally learned most from while recording. Some holiday listening for those of you traveling this week (I’m headed to the airport in 30 mins…). Fun to record 8 episodes this year. With that, signing off for 2025! ✌️

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 09/12/2025

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

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Bitsy Perlman @bitsyperlman.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

I appreciated the reflection on how insane 18th and 19th century science seemed. What do you mean you put a dog's brain into a rabbit's brain? Wait, you are carefully observing a sealed dead eel?

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

THIS is what I need no more ryan lizza and so forth etc

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Attenuation Is All You Need (Well, inactivation too) We cover the invention of 20 vaccines from the 1700s through 1970. Technology (smallpox vaccine) preceding scientific understanding (germ theory), then speeding up once theory established from experiments (maggots…) & new tools made (agar plates)

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Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Some news: Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving! Our mission is unchanged but the new name reflects our growing work with other donors to multiply the impact of their giving. 🧵 on our work to make philanthropy a more efficient "market" and plans going forward:

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Otis Reid @otisreid.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Some amazing jobs here! Our science and global health R&D team works on funding breakthroughs for neglected, high mortality/morbidity diseases and does a ton of great and interesting work -- see job links in Jacob's thread!

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

You can get a sense of what we support from this piece last year. We fund whatever we believe is important, neglected, and tractable across many areas of discovery and translation, which leads to a broad portfolio. Generalists very much welcome! www.openphilanthropy.org/research/fiv...

Screenshot of Open Philanthropy blog post on 5 science giving highlights

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Hiring a PO to help us give away tens of millions more in vaccine R&D over the coming years, in particular to make progress on strep A. Kills 600k/y but should be fixable with creativity... Looking for an experienced scientist, but not necessarily in strep A: jobs.ashbyhq.com/openphilanth...

jobs.ashbyhq.com

Program Officer, Science and Global Health R&D

Open Philanthropy is seeking a Program Officer to execute, expand, and refine our existing grantmaking strategies in Global Health R&D.

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Senior Program Associates will work closely with our existing (world class!) POs to help scale grantmaking Variety of research & analysis, interacting with grantees, portfolio management Fun for people with technical backgrounds who are impact focused: jobs.ashbyhq.com/openphilanth...

jobs.ashbyhq.com

Senior Program Associates, Science and Global Health R&D

Open Philanthropy is looking for multiple Senior Program Associates to support our grantmaking aimed at improving global health through scientific research and R&D

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

🚨 Hiring scientists to help give away money 🚨 At Open Philanthropy, we have given away $600M in biomedical research since 2016. Now, we're expanding the team to do more. We're hiring: * Up to 3 Senior Program Associates * Program Officer in strep A Remote OK, salaries in links! (Thread below)

blog.jacobtrefethen.com

Hiring scientists to give away money

At Open Philanthropy, we have given away $600 million in biomedical research since 2016. That funding has supported the work of thousands of scientists across hundreds of universities, nonprofits, and...

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

This one is kind of for you tbh, made us happy to think of your reaction if we dropped it

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 29/10/2025

MFW my co-host @jacobtref.bsky.social is telling me all about the drug development pipeline.

And then if that all looks good, you're going to submit a huge data package to the FDA and say, "Can I please sell this drug in America?" The FDA will take 6 to 10 months and review your data, review your thousands of pages of submission and get back to you with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. After you're selling your drug, you're still collecting data. The FDA might require further studies after they approve your drug if there are particular questions they have that things should be addressed. If in those studies you end up with a negative result, they might withdraw your ability to sell the drug; that happens somewhat frequently. Also, you're going to be collecting in the real world, more side effect data. Once hundreds of thousands of people are using a drug, you will spot more side effects. They won't be randomized, so you won't necessarily get as high quality data, but you at least get more data as things come in, so the evidence collection does not stop once you get approval.

Saloni Dattani:
Wow, great. That's a very long process. So I have two things about mice that I wanted to talk about.

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Spotify likes to do a second transcript of its own, and gave you a new name:

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Jeff Mosenkis @mosenkis.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Welp @scientificdiscovery.dev and Jacob are back again, Will AI Cure Disease? By the end of the 4.5 hours you'll be significantly older and might find out! www.worksinprogress.news/p/will-ai-so...?

worksinprogress.news

Will AI solve medicine?

Some say AI will solve medicine within a decade. Others believe biology is far more complex than people imagine and AI will hit the limits of clinical trials and economics. Who's right?

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Will AI solve medicine? We decided to be as definitive as is possible in 2025. That meant going long, through the drug development process Sections 1. Clashing worldviews 2. Drug discovery 3. Models 4. Efficacy 5. Safety 6. Manufacturing & healthcare 7. Funding 8. Trust & ambition Hope you enjoy!

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 19/10/2025

Apparently some people think I'm AI generated, because... I don't blink enough

YouTube comment that says "Fascinating! Almost didn't realise this was AI generated content until I noticed the blink rate and ran it through a model."

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 17/10/2025

Tune in to find out: - how to go from hallucinated cat pictures to hallucinated proteins - whether @jacobtref.bsky.social can do photosynthesis - whether we can make tiny protein straws for tardigrades to drink from

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Our most practical episode yet for people who want to dabble in biotech As of 2022, you can hallucinate protein structures using AI similar to Midjourney (RFDiffusion) -> create amino acid strings for them (ProteinMPNN) -> validate with AlphaFold Biology becomes engineering…

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 02/10/2025

Cool episode on how AI can help us design new proteins (e.g., for vaccines). I’d heard of AlphaFold before, but not of ProteinMPNN. You feed a protein structure into PMPNN & generate possible sequences of amino acids. And then you feed those into AlphaFold to check whether they’d fold up that way!

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Hearing a lot about AI designing drugs, but not sure what specifically that means? Ever wonder how AlphaFold works, or what practical problems it helps with? How rattan daybeds can hold their own in a modern home? This episode is for you!

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

every time i feel bad about writing long essays / blog posts i think, no. what would saloni and jacob do.

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 17/09/2025

The reviews are in! "I heard it just now! So good 😊" – my mom "Just listened to the new insulin episode and loved it." – @rossaokod.bsky.social "you should have added 5 more minutes on how early researchers checked for the sweetness of animal urine..." – @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social

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Andy Purkiss @andypurk.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

1/3 As someone diagnosed as Type 1 in 1976, I can remember beginning on porcine insulin (bovine was another alternative). The first "human" insulin I had was actually enzymatically modified porcine. I started with glass syringes, with exchangeable all metal needles, stored in methylated spirit.

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Very interesting. Thank you so much for sharing!

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Last episode: an introduction to what proteins are This episode: proteins can be medicines! Insulin is a protein. 104 years ago, no one with diabetes had been injected with it, then came insulin from animals, then came bioreactors...

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 04/09/2025

Saloni and Jacob have a natural way to make everything sound like it’s the coolest thing in the world, so naturally I’m now all on board of the protein train 🚂

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

AI for protein design won a Nobel Prize last year. Are new protein drugs to cure diseases on their way? This episode introduces what proteins are. You can listen to it on its own, or as the first plank of us answering that question. Subscribe in a podcast app for future planks!

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

I randomly sampled 1 day later and 1 block away from the original photo. Claim supported ✅

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

For readers who are sceptical of the promises they've heard about AI, I wrote this piece. I am more optimistic. I think AI will be a big deal in helping develop new lifesaving drugs: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ai-optimism/ Hope you enjoy!

blog.jacobtrefethen.com

AI could help lead to an Alzheimer’s cure

Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starts with piano keys, church bells, violins soaring through the first verse. Then a drum roll, and Lana belts out: Will you still love me when I’m no longer you...

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jacobtref.bsky.social @jacobtref.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

I found it difficult to write about the topic for a unified audience, since, in my experience, people have very different starting beliefs about it. For readers who suspect AI might change everything soon, I wrote this, with a bunch of questions & responses: blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ai-san-franc...

blog.jacobtrefethen.com

AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer’s cure

I work on funding science for the sake of medical progress, but only 10% of our science funding at Open Philanthropy is related to AI. The whole premise of Open Philanthropy is we try to allocate mone...

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