Jack O'Meara

We need to fix the $5 trillion American healthcare system, and I believe AI is our best shot. That’s why a big chunk of SignalFire’s recent $1B+ fundraise will go to health and pharmatech. Some of the ideas our team has been working on... - Solving the healthcare labor shortage: 2/3s of healthcare workers are burned out. We need faster credentialing, smarter workflow tools, and outpatient monitoring so people don’t end up in the ER - Using AI to bring medicines to market faster: As generative biology 10Xs drug invention, we need tech to keep clinical trials and regulatory filings from becoming the bottleneck - Hybrid home care for aging populations: $265B is spend is shifting to in-home care. We need tech to train a new fleet of caregivers and automate medical supplies logistics so they can focus on patients. Thank you to Heather Landi at Fierce Healthcare for featuring SignalFire’s investments in this critical space (link in the comments), our health investment team Yuanling Yuan, Sooah Cho, Sahir Raoof, Tony Pezzullo, and the many SignalFire portfolio companies in this space for trusting us to support their mission: Grow Therapy, Color, Ro, CodaMetrix, Qualified Health, Centaur Labs, Health Gorilla, Verse, Wellth, PayZen, Recora, all.health, Bicycle Health, Form Health,Health Note, Osso VR, Praia Health, Freshpaint, Auxilius, Ovation Healthcare, OrthoFX, Moxie, and many more coming out of stealth soon!

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Big News at Pack Ventures 🚀🐺🧬 We’re thrilled to welcome two outstanding Venture Partners to the Pack Ventures team! Jenny Cronin, PhD and William Canestaro, PhD are two of the most respected and well-connected figures in the Seattle biotech landscape. They strengthen our mission of building the leading pre-seed biotech fund in Seattle—a city we believe is one of the most important biotech markets in the world for the convergence of A.I. and Biotech! Seattle isn’t just home to world-class institutions like the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, Fred Hutch, and Seattle Children's —it’s also a global hub where AI and biotech converge. From David Baker’s recent #NobelPrize to the cutting-edge work coming out of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, Microsoft, Amazon, and the Allen Institute and Ai2 , the depth of A.I. talent here is extraordinary. At Pack Ventures, we’re doubling down on the Seattle and UW innovation ecosystem. Our belief is simple: the next generation of industry-defining biotech companies will be built here—and we’re here to help founders make that future a reality. With our new Venture Partners on board, we’re better equipped than ever to support early-stage founders transforming science into scalable solutions. #Biotech #VentureCapital #AIxBio #SeattleInnovation #PackVentures #UWSpinouts #TechBio

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Biotech Industry Trends in 2025, according to Labiotech 📈 A well-researched article by Willow Shah-Neville outlines some key trends that are likely to dominate conversations and dealrooms in 2025, many of which align with insights we’ve been discussing at LongeVC You should read the article as it provides a lot of details, but here is a quick overview: ✔️ Artificial intelligence continues to revolutionize drug discovery, predictive analytics, and trial design, making processes faster, more efficient, and targeted. ✔️ CRISPR advancements and innovative delivery methods (both viral and non-viral) are unlocking potential applications for genetic medicine beyond rare diseases. ✔️ Personalization in treatment is advancing with metabolomics and genomics, allowing companies to tailor therapies to patient-specific needs. ✔️ Despite market saturation risks, startups and established players are pursuing innovations in the GLP-1 space, a high-demand segment. ✔️ Increased investment and breakthroughs in biologics and targeted therapies are transforming how we approach autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. ✔️ Larger and even medium-sized biotechs are actively acquiring smaller companies to bolster pipelines, as highlighted by my colleague at LongeVC, Artem A. Trotsyuk. ✔️ AI, decentralized designs, and inclusive strategies are driving efficiency, diversity, and better outcomes in clinical trials. ✔️ U.S. policy shifts, including potential regulatory changes, are influencing biotech strategies, particularly in areas like vaccine development and alternative therapies. From myself, I would also add a considerable change in the status quo of who drives innovations. For instance, Eric Dai an investor with experience at Andreessen Horowitz’s Bio Fund and currently part of Dimension’s investment team, shared a striking observation from a recent Stifel Bank report: one-third of molecules acquired by major pharmaceutical companies now originate from China, compared to nearly none four years ago! Kudos to Where Tech Meets Bio (Substack Newsletter) for spotting this trend in their latest newsletter (link in the comments). Image credit: Labiotech

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Claude made 90% of AI biotech startups obsolete. Here's exactly what the surviving 10% need to do and what investors and founders need to know. First, the uncomfortable truth: Most AI biotechs were just arbitraging pharma's fear of the cloud. Building ChatGPT wrappers. Charging $100K/year for Benchling connectors that Claude now ships free. Hundreds of startups selling "AI-powered drug discovery" just became middlemen nobody needs. Many investors backed the hype. Now they're holding equity in companies solving yesterday's problems. Pharma doesn't need another chatbot. They need AI they can actually use. The winners won't have the best models. They'll make those models trustworthy, deployable, and compliant. The next $10B life sciences companies aren't competing with Anthropic. They're completing the stack Anthropic started. Here's what the surviving 10% must do: 1. Build what Claude can't Stop competing on language models. Build wet lab automation, molecular simulation engines, clinical trial infrastructure. The hard stuff. 2. Become the translation layer Pharma has Claude. They don't know how to use it. Be the partner that turns AI capability into validated drug development workflows. 3. Own specialized domains Go so deep on protein folding, ADMET prediction, or target identification that even Claude needs your expertise. 4. Create the governance framework Every pharma needs AI compliance, validation, and audit trails. Build the infrastructure that makes Claude FDA-compliant. 5. Focus on outcomes, not tools Stop selling "AI." Start selling faster drug discovery, cheaper trials, better patient outcomes. When platforms shift, fortunes are made. Not by fighting the platform, but by building on it. Salesforce created a $10B ecosystem. iOS created a $100B ecosystem. Claude for Life Sciences just laid the foundation for the first trillion-dollar biotech ecosystem. Welcome to biotech's golden age. Best time to be investing and building. #AI #Biotech #LifeSciences #VentureCapital #StartupStrategy #HealthTech

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🤖 DeepSeek AI is making AI cheaper and open-source 🚗 BYD’s ‘God’s Eye’ is bringing self-driving to the masses 💊 China’s biotech firms are undercutting Big Pharma on cost and speed Instead of chasing high-margin breakthroughs, China’s best companies win on scale, affordability, and adoption. But in the long run, does scale beat premium? My latest for South China Morning Post SCMP: The next era of innovation won't be exclusive—it will be ubiquitous. 👇 https://lnkd.in/g5-zK-Q7

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TCR-T cell therapy is quietly maturing… but public market valuations still look like it’s 2018. 𝐎𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞: 🧬 First approvals (Adaptimmune’s Tecelra®) 🧬 50%+ ORRs in late-stage trials (Immatics’ IMA203) 🧬 A flood of platform innovation - AI-powered discovery, bispecific TCRs, armored T cells, TCR-NK hybrids 𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞: 💰 Adaptimmune = $77M market cap, despite an approved product and pivotal-stage pipeline 💰 TScan Therapeutics = ~$75M, even after two fundraises and a deep partnership with Amgen 💰 Instil Bio = $96M, zero revenue but $110M in the bank If you judged by the pipelines and partnerships alone - Immatics (w/Moderna), 3T Biosciences (w/Boehringer Ingelheim), Adaptimmune (w/Galapagos) - you'd expect valuations 5x higher. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲? TCR-T still suffers from three invisible bottlenecks: 🧪 Moat complexity: Platforms like XPRESIDENT®, XCEPTOR®, and TAILOR™ are defensible - but hard to understand unless you live in this space. 🏗️ Talent bottlenecks: Companies can't scale trials or manufacturing without specialists in vector process development, MHC assay design, and GMP operations. And right now, that talent is scarce and expensive. 💼 Investor psychology: Most still see TCR-T as “not quite proven” - even with first approvals and randomized Phase 3s in motion. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲. From KRAS and TP53 to PRAME and NY-ESO-1, the target landscape is diversifying fast. And the platforms behind them are finally scalable - Affini-T Therapeutics’s TUNE™ and THRIVE™, Immatics’ AI-led XCUBE™, and Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp.’s 8,000+ fully human TCRs all hint at readiness to go broader. - I think we’re at an inflection point. - Valuations may not reflect it yet. - But the science and the infrastructure - are catching up. I'd love to hear from others: 🔹 Are we underpricing TCR-T innovation? 🔹 Which companies are best positioned to lead the next wave? 🔹 And will investors recognize the moat before the market does? Tagging some more to get the community involved: Enara Bio, Anocca, Neogene Therapeutics, BlueSphere Bio, Immunocore, TScan Therapeutics #TCRT #celltherapy #biotech #immunotherapy #oncology #solidtumors #biopharma #clinicaltrials #biotechstrategy #drugdevelopment

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