RIO DE JANEIRO — Re­searchers at Lila Sci­ences were left scratch­ing their heads over the lab re­sults.

They had built AI mod­els to se­lect mR­NA mol­e­cules that ex­press high lev­els of a de­sired pro­tein. Af­ter test­ing near­ly one mil­lion se­quences in the lab, the mod­els were get­ting quite good at that goal.

But the AI al­so picked mol­e­cules that were ex­cep­tion­al­ly sta­ble, re­fus­ing to dis­in­te­grate like typ­i­cal mR­NA. Even af­ter a cou­ple weeks, Lila's mol­e­cules were ex­press­ing pro­teins at the same lev­el as com­pa­ra­ble mR­NA does af­ter a cou­ple of days.

The sur­prise was that Lila's sci­en­tists didn’t ask for su­per-durable mol­e­cules. It just hap­pened, said Ben Kom­pa, Lila co-founder and head of AI lab in­no­va­tion, de­scrib­ing it as an “emer­gent ca­pa­bil­i­ty” of AI. He be­lieves these new re­sults are “a glimpse of RNA su­per­in­tel­li­gence” and sug­gest the start­up is on the right path to cre­at­ing AI that per­forms every step of the sci­en­tif­ic method bet­ter than hu­mans.

Vari­a­tions on the hub-and-spoke mod­el have blos­somed in the drug de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try over the past few years — and a new an­ti­body hub is en­ter­ing the fray.

Pro­tu­oso Bio­sciences col­lect­ed a $9.5 mil­lion seed round from Taya Ven­ture, Dar­win Ven­tures and NSG Ven­tures, among oth­ers, the com­pa­ny ex­clu­sive­ly told End­points News the day be­fore its pub­lic launch.

Pro­tu­oso is be­gin­ning with three wings: car­diometa­bol­ic dis­eases, where it can “ad­dress both the up­stream obe­si­ty bi­ol­o­gy” and the “down­stream end-or­gan dis­ease or dam­age”; as well as can­cer and au­toim­mune con­di­tions. It aims to treat the “root cause” of dis­eases with its an­ti­bod­ies, said co-founder and chair Tim Lu, who’s helped co-found oth­er biotechs such as Tan­go Ther­a­peu­tics and Sen­ti Bio.

💰 Carte­sian Ther­a­peu­tic’s $150M fi­nanc­ing: The Mary­land biotech se­cured $50 mil­lion in an ini­tial tranche from K2 HealthVen­tures. The cred­it fa­cil­i­ty will help the com­pa­ny “ac­cel­er­ate” its com­mer­cial launch work in myas­the­nia gravis and myosi­tis. It now has run­way in­to 2028, get­ting it to key da­ta points for its au­tol­o­gous BC­MA CAR-T cell ther­a­py. — Kyle LaHu­cik

💸 Ed­i­tas Med­i­cine’s mon­ey moves: The Cam­bridge, MA-based ED­IT gene edit­ing biotech said it gained gross pro­ceeds of about $125 mil­lion from a stock sale. It could col­lect an­oth­er $194 mil­lion in gross pro­ceeds if com­mon stock war­rants are ex­er­cised. The fi­nanc­ing move came the same morn­ing Ed­i­tas pre­sent­ed pre­clin­i­cal da­ta at the Eu­ro­pean Ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis So­ci­ety Con­gress. — Kyle LaHu­cik

Eli Lil­ly's deal­mak­ing team must have a "that was easy" Sta­ples but­ton.

The world's most valu­able health­care com­pa­ny and mak­er of the biggest-sell­ing med­i­cine glob­al­ly is putting its cash to use for its eighth, ninth and 10th ac­qui­si­tions of 2026.

Lil­ly is mak­ing three ac­qui­si­tions at once on Tues­day, for up to $3.8 bil­lion to­tal, to in­crease its pres­ence in in­fec­tious dis­ease. The phar­ma is buy­ing Cure­vo, Lim­maT­e­ch Bi­o­log­ics and Vac­cine Com­pa­ny.

The trio of deals add to the sev­en that Lil­ly has al­ready dis­closed so far this year. With 10 ac­qui­si­tions in five months, Lil­ly has be­come the most ac­tive deal­mak­er in bio­phar­ma.

Eli Lil­ly said a base edit­ing gene ther­a­py from its pur­chase of Verve Ther­a­peu­tics de­liv­ered ad­di­tion­al pos­i­tive re­sults in a Phase 1b tri­al, paving the way for a mid-stage test by year’s end.