Hello my trottered tribe,
It’s been a piggin’ week in the world of biotech, with new therapies rooting out childhood brain cancer, porcine kidney transplants keeping patients off dialysis for a record nine months, Google DeepMind snuffling through a human DNA map in search of disease cures, fat jabs helping asthma patients breathe easier, and AI toilets analysing gut health from poo like a pig in muck.
Don’t hog the headlines!
Dodo
If you’d like to sponsor a future edition of Biotech Dodo, send us a message.
Biotech’s next frontier
Genomic medicine is at an inflection point. What comes next has even the sceptics feeling hopeful
Discover 🔍
👶 BrainChild hauls in $116M to make cell therapies for childhood brain cancers (BioPharma Dive): BrainChild Bio has secured a bumper raise to push its CAR-T therapy for DIPG, an almost always fatal childhood brainstem cancer, into a pivotal Phase 2 trial. The Seattle Children’s Hospital spinout’s B7-H3-targeted treatment is infused directly into the brain’s fluid, skipping chemotherapy conditioning, and can be given in multiple doses. A second, triple-target CAR-T for glioblastoma enters first-in-human trials next year.
Our take: Skipping conditioning does more than spare children a round of chemotherapy; conventional CAR-T is a one-and-done treatment, whereas BrainChild’s therapy can be dosed again through an implanted reservoir. Few companies have tried this at all – the prejudice, as founder Michael Jensen puts it, being that the brain would be intolerant to having cells directly administered. Primary completion isn’t until 2028, so whether that prejudice is justified remains to be seen.
🐷 Pig-to-human kidney transplantation hits a new milestone (Pharmaphorum): A genetically engineered pig kidney has kept a patient dialysis-free for a record 271 days, and he has since received a human donor organ. The eGenesis EGEN-2784 kidney marks the first use of xenotransplantation as a bridge to transplantation. Five patients have now received a pig kidney, two of whom have since gone on to human donor kidneys, while an FDA-cleared 33-patient RESTORE trial will test whether pig kidneys can become a scalable answer to the donor shortage. (Read the Lancet paper)
Our take: Xenotransplantation may become a queue-management technology before it becomes a cure. The most immediate clinical opportunity may not be permanent pig-organ replacement, but using xenotransplants to reshape transplant waiting lists. If pig kidneys can reliably keep patients off dialysis for months, they could buffer the sickest or hardest-to-match patients, changing how scarce human kidneys are allocated and potentially reducing deaths while waiting.
🧠 Google DeepMind maps human DNA in quest to cure ‘all disease’ (The Times): Google DeepMind has built AlphaGenome Atlas, an AI tool predicting the effects of roughly nine billion possible single-letter changes to human DNA. Free for academic researchers, it’s designed to help scientists spot disease-causing mutations hidden among millions of variants. It has already flagged a previously missed mutation as the likely cause of severe epilepsy in a young child, pointing to a faster route from genome sequencing to diagnosis and drug discovery.
Our take: DeepMind is quietly moving upstream in the pharmaceutical value chain. AlphaFold helped researchers understand proteins, which sit close to drug targets, and AlphaGenome Atlas moves even further back, helping decipher which genetic changes are worthy of further research. That gives DeepMind potential influence over the earliest stages of target discovery, patient stratification and disease definition, and makes its AI increasingly embedded in pharma’s drug pipelines.
🫁 Patients with asthma using this weight loss drug ‘may have fewer attacks’ (The Independent): A major UK real-world study into semaglutide, presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress, suggests that metabolic drugs could have unexpected benefits for lung disease. Researchers found that people with asthma taking the drug had nearly 40% fewer attacks, while COPD flare-ups fell by around 20%. The effect was strongest in people with more severe asthma and at higher doses.
Our take: Semaglutide could expose obesity as a hidden driver of “difficult” asthma. The fact that the sickest patients benefit most suggests that some treatment-resistant respiratory disease could actually be due to metabolic inflammation. That could push asthma care towards more deliberate phenotyping of obesity, insulin resistance and systemic inflammation, rather than simply escalating inhaled therapies.
And finally…
💩 Smart toilets are already using AI to analyse your poop (Wired): AI-powered toilet cameras from Kohler Health and Throne are turning one of the most private parts of daily life into a new stream of health data. Their devices clip onto the toilet, recording bowel movements and using AI to analyse stool consistency, colour and urine characteristics, which the companies claim delivers personalised gut-health reports within minutes. Kohler’s device already alerts users to blood in the bowl, while Throne says a next-generation version could pick up blood invisible to the eye within two years – though both stop short of promising a diagnosis.
Our take: A single stool profile tells you very little, but months of individual baseline data could reveal deviations that standard testing would never pick up. Someone managing Crohn’s disease, where clinicians often request stool diaries but patients rarely keep them, could certainly benefit. For the average user, however, $400 (plus an annual subscription) is a lot to pay for something their own eyes could tell them.
Tune in 🎧
🧬 How Evox Therapeutics is targeting CNS diseases with exosomes: The UK biotech's chief executive on why its delivery platform is moving past RNA and biologics into CRISPR-based gene editing.
💰 Funding a virtual biotech without institutional capital with Sarcomatrix’s David Craig: Why the traditional playbook no longer fits a selective funding environment, and how alternative routes such as Regulation D offerings can keep a lean company moving.
🦀 Engineering T-cell engagers for solid cancers: Deck Bio’s chief executive on building multi-target engagers to reach more cancer cells, give tumours fewer ways to escape, and leave healthy tissue alone.
Apply ✍️
💬 Communication Manager, AbbVie: Fancy shaping how one of the world’s biggest pharma companies is seen in the UK? You’ll plan and execute external, corporate, digital and internal campaigns, working across External Affairs, commercial, medical affairs and market access.
🤑 Account Manager, Thermo Fisher Scientific: Ready to drive commercial growth across analytical instruments, consumables and services? In this account-focused role, you’ll sell and support the chromatography and mass spectrometry portfolio, build long-lasting customer relationships and develop strategic growth opportunities.
🤝 Head of Growth & Partnerships, Optima Partners: Passionate about turning specialist data science, AI, bioinformatics and translational research capability into funded client engagements across global life sciences? You’ll co-lead commercial strategy, shape compelling propositions and drive sustainable revenue growth.
RSVP 📆
🔬 21–25.09 | Life Sciences Week 2026 | Birmingham, UK: A five-day national programme bringing together biotech, medtech, pharma, academia and investors around cutting-edge research, AI in biotech/med-tech and the future of UK healthcare innovation.
🧫 29.09 | BioForward 2026 | Didcot, UK: A free event at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus connecting research scientists and R&D companies with the CROs, clinical services, digital and legal providers they depend on.
💷 01.10 | BioCap 2026 | Macclesfield, UK: A one-day conference at Alderley Park on the life sciences funding landscape, with panels on investment trends and an investors’ mixer the evening before.
🤖 13.10 | TechBio UK | London, UK: The BioIndustry Association’s flagship techbio gathering, convening biotech, pharma, tech and investment leaders around data and AI, genomics and engineering biology.
Got news, jobs or events you think are worth coo-ing over? Post an event here, or email us at biotechdodo@substack.com!
We’re SomX, a communications and creative agency trusted by biotech, pharma and healthtech pioneers. We craft strategy, content, PR and design that translate complex biology into compelling stories and investor-ready excitement. Get in touch to amplify your science beyond the lab bench.