Isomorphic Labs, the Google DeepMind spinout, published details on its drug design engine this week, a system that goes beyond AlphaFold's protein structure prediction to actually design novel drug molecules. The same week, a 13-year-old became the first person treated with a fully personalized CRISPR therapy, developed in just six months for roughly $800,000, a fraction of prior estimates for bespoke gene editing. These two items alone would make this a landmark week in biomedicine.
The broader issue 180 of Not Boring's Weekly Dose runs 7 Extra Doses, each dense enough to anchor its own piece. Topics span nuclear fusion milestones, robotics deployments, and materials science breakthroughs. The editors frame the acceleration explicitly: three years ago this newsletter existed to counter pessimism, now it exists to prevent you from falling behind.
Read the original for the Isomorphic Labs technical breakdown, specifically how the drug design engine couples generative modeling with binding affinity prediction to close the loop AlphaFold left open. The CRISPR case study also deserves full attention: the six-month development timeline is the number that rewrites assumptions about rare disease treatment economics.
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