Ever since artificial intelligence (AI) drug developer Xaira Therapeutics launched in April 2024 with a jaw-dropping $1 billion in committed capital and a star-studded leadership lineup—including David Baker, PhD, the 2024 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and University of Washington/HHMI investigator, Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, the 2022 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Stanford University, Scott Gottlieb, MD, former FDA head, Alex Gorsky, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson, and more—the field has eagerly awaited equally blockbuster scientific results.
The AI unicorn has delivered, capping its first year by releasing a gift to the virtual cell community: the largest publicly available Perturb-seq dataset, termed X-Atlas/Orion, to interrogate how cells respond to external conditions, such as therapeutic interventions, at large scale.
