Fireside Chat, Interview
Pande & Conde: When (and How) Biology Becomes Engineering
- The biological sector is predicted to shift from a stochastic, high-risk science to an engineering-based, methodical discipline within approximately two years or by 2030, characterized by the mixing and matching of biological "Legos" and the transition of genetic engineering into an engineered discipline where DNA serves as a design medium.
- Disciplines including mechanical, electrical, material, and computer science are expected to increasingly apply principles of metal and steel to biological materials, while the creation of bioengineering academic departments over the last decade is anticipated to accelerate the influx of engineer-biologists into the industry.
- High-throughput biology conducted at massive scale and the integration of machine learning are expected to replace decade-long bespoke discoveries with engineered, repeatable processes, potentially resulting in pharma companies viewing themselves as data-generating entities with dry labs as large as wet labs within 10 years.
- The valuation focus is projected to shift from individual assets to platforms capable of reproducibly creating multiple assets, with medicinal chemists transitioning into drug designers, and the second drug asset becoming more valuable than the first due to cumulative learnings.
- Investors are expected to favor buyers in the biotech industry who demonstrate high predictability, inverting the historical ratio of testing 10,000 items to find one success, allowing early-stage companies to secure projects through step-wise improvements rather than facing long periods of stochastic risk.
- Complex engineering goals such as curing cancer or increasing human longevity by 50 percent are expected to be achieved by breaking them down into smaller, engineerable bits using OKRs and KPIs, following an Apollo mission paradigm.
- Business models historically difficult in biotech, such as "land and expand," are anticipated to become viable as the sector moves from bespoke projects to design, enabling companies to scale and improve speed and cost efficiency.
- Companies demonstrating scalable, systematic engineering-like improvement curves are expected to gain traction predictably, with platforms improving by approximately 30% annually expected to achieve a doubling of effectiveness every two years through compounding gains.
- The ecosystem of academia, research institutions, startups, and big companies is expected to collectively build the necessary infrastructure to facilitate this transition, as the market will increasingly accept engineered capabilities as a general term similar to the trajectory of Illumina in sequencing.
- Engineered biology is predicted to enable the creation of previously unknown possibilities, such as sustainable, self-growing biological materials like glowing trees that combat global warming, alongside the ability to design parts where a significant percentage function as intended.