Bringing in "operations management" beyond the lab
OpenAI said on its official X account on Oct. 20 (Oct. 21 Japan time) that it had acquired U.S.-based Orchestra Bio, which makes software for managing the progress of drug development programs. Orchestra makes software that coordinates development trials, contractors and schedules. Founder Ashoka Rajendra will also join OpenAI. The purchase price was not disclosed. Orchestra was reported to have raised $20 million before the acquisition.
OpenAI will fold Orchestra into "Rosalind," its life sciences business. Rosalind has so far focused on models and research tools for scientists. With the acquisition, it extends its reach beyond discoveries in the lab to running drug development programs. The idea that AI agents can create value by coordinating trials, contractors and schedules has not yet been proven.
Brain cell data analyzed in 32 minutes with thousands of AIs
The next day, Oct. 21, the company published research using Rosalind's model "GPT-Rosalind." Together with U.S.-based PerturbAI and the Scripps Research Institute, it analyzed data in which the activity of genes was switched off one at a time in millions of mouse brain cells. Thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents worked in parallel, each assigned to one gene, measuring the cells' responses, searching scientific papers and proposing hypotheses about the mechanisms. Finally, they compiled their reports and built a "reasoning map" linking genes, cell types, effects and supporting papers.
The computation took 32 minutes, and the company estimated that it would take researchers up to a year to analyze the data one by one. When experts compared the results blind, the report from many agents was preferred over the report from a single agent 75% of the time. The many agents cited more than 700 papers, compared with 11 for a single agent.
Clues about a rare neurological disease, still to be verified
One result was a clue about "Perry syndrome," a rare neurological disease that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease. When the activity of "DCTN1," the gene that causes it, was switched off, the activity of genes that make cholesterol increased. The agents linked this to earlier research showing that when the export of cholesterol is blocked, cells try to make even more of it.
However, this is a hypothesis, and the mechanism has not been verified. The paper is a "preprint" that has not undergone peer review, and the results are from mouse cells. The 32 minutes covers only the time to interpret existing data, and separate experiments are needed to generate data and to test the hypothesis.
Companies continue to push drug discovery with AI. On the same day, Anthropic published research in which Claude designed proteins that bind to scorpion venom, and Microsoft released "BioEmu2," an AI that reproduces the movement of molecules.
