Hsu: Scaling single-cell screens alone will feel dated in three years
Patrick Hsu · Faster Science, Better Drugs · Sep 15, 2025 · at 9:55
Patrick Hsu, co-founder of Arc Institute, explains why Arc prioritizes novel biotechnological invention over simply scaling existing perturbation screening techniques.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We weren't just going to be an engineering shop that's just trying to scale single cell perturbation screens, right? That You know, would be interesting, but in three years would feel very dated, I think, right?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Patrick Hsu
Hsu: AI pharma commercial pitches outpace fundamental research breakthroughs
“I think in many ways the kind of pitch and the framing of these companies precedes The fundamental research capability breakthroughs.”
Hsu: Current AI biological models are at GPT-1 or GPT-2 capability levels
“I find it helpful to frame these in terms of like GPT one, two, three, four, five capabilities, right? And I think most people would agree we're somewhere between GPT one and two, right?”
Hsu: GLP-1 market value exceeds 40 years of biotech startups combined
“The first is the amount of market cap added to Lilly and Novo based on the, you know, development of GLP ones. It's like over a trillion dollars is, is more, you know, I mean, NOAA stock has decreased a lot. So you know, trillion dollars, let's say, is more th…”
Hsu: Physical synthesis and testing will remain AI drug discovery's bottleneck
“If we play this out, right? And let's say these AI models work, right? And you can make a trillion binders in silico that will, you know, be exquisite drug matter, right? We still need to make these things physically and test them in animals and hopefully pred…”
Hsu: Virtual cell models do not need mechanistic explanations to be useful
“And I would say similarly with a virtual cell model, it may not tell me literally why, just like a alpha fold doesn't tell me literally why did the protein fold this way and how, but it just told me the end state and it was reasonably accurate. I think that wo…”
Hsu: Arc Institute's moonshot is building virtual cells using foundation models
“Our moonshot is really to make virtual cells at Arc and simulate human biology with foundation models, and, you know, we'd like to figure out something that feels useful for experimentalists, people who are skeptical about technology, you know, they just want …”