Ex­clu­sive: Mi­crosoft, Sam Alt­man back a new AI biotech up­start

Most ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence biotechs start with a com­put­er sci­en­tist or two and an al­go­rithm. Jen Nwankwo start­ed from the oth­er side of the spec­trum.

She had just got­ten her PhD from Tufts in 2016, a dyed-in-the-wool phar­ma­col­o­gist who had re­ceived an HH­MI fel­low­ship and worked on sick­le cell drug dis­cov­ery at Boston Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, and was work­ing at Bain Cap­i­tal when she start­ed read­ing up on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. She’d pour over every news ar­ti­cle she saw on self-dri­ving cars or im­age recog­ni­tion, won­der­ing with each word how she could ap­ply the same tech­nol­o­gy to the prob­lems that plagued her as a drug de­vel­op­er.

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