William Gibson

As personalized neoantigen mRNA vaccines extend to other tumor types, it's going to be interesting to see where the effect size is biggest.

TMB=0.1 -> No good antigens, vaccine makes no difference.

TMB=30 -> Checkpoint wipes out the tumor anyway, vaccine makes no difference.

Luckily 95% of patients lie between these numbers, but where is the sweet spot? In the coming years, we'll see!

The Moderna Phase 3 results just read out for personalized mRNA vaccines, and it was positive! If the Phase 2b result is representative, the mRNA vaccines in that setting cut the risk of recurrence in half.

"A 49% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death (HR=0.51; [95% CI, 0.294-0.887]) and a 59% reduction in the risk of distant metastasis or death (HR=0.411; [95% CI, 0.200-0.843]) compared to KEYTRUDA alone."

merck.com/news/merck-and…

Here at #AACR2026 presenting on induced proximity therapeutics beyond degradation. Would love to connect with anyone working on molecular glues, targeted protein modulation, or p53 – always more interesting to talk in person than over email. DM or find me in the halls.

RevMed just doubled overall survival in pancreatic cancer by using CypA-targeting molecular glues to potently drug oncogenic KRAS-ON, long deemed untouchable.

One funny thing is that probably the most fundamental insight for daraxonrasib sits in a PNAS paper that's been cited merely 84 times. This showed that molecular glues can coax an endogenous protein to wrap itself around utterly featureless surface. The other is a 2017 Cell Reports paper (just 68 citations) on how Sanglifehrin A can be used to repurpose CypA's surface. A lot of the game-changing stuff seems niche and unglamorous at first.

Greg Verdine is having a chembio Annus Mirabilis for his 2025-2026 streak: FOG-001, Daraxonrasib. He provided much of the foundational conceptual work behind taking out both Beta-catenin and KRAS*.

*of course many others contributed immensely, but let's give some credit where credit is due!

Beautiful illustration of quantifying p53 protein abundance in mutant cell lines, which we aim to exploit using proximity inducing small molecules.