Chu: Xaira is building three core AI platforms for drug discovery
Ci Chu · 🔬Causal Models Need Causal Data - Xaira’s X-Cell model (Bo Wang & Ci Chu) · Jul 21, 2026 · at 3:36
Ci Chu is Chief Discovery Officer at Xaira Therapeutics, an AI-native biotechnology startup. He outlines the company's core technological architecture.
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“There are three main AI platforms that we're building here. The first one is Protein Design, work that spun out of our co-founder Dr. David Baker's group from UW. A lot of the current generation of protein designers are here in the company. So there, the thinking is to use advanced AI technology to develop molecules against previously undruggable targets. The second AI platform, I guess we'll spend a lot of time talking about today is the one that Bill and I have been working on for quite some time and just released the preprint on. That's the Virtual Cell or Foundation Model of Biology work. There, the hope is to build an AI model To predict biology, exactly like you said, and predict what genes and drug molecules will affect cell biology. And the third piece, which we're beginning to build now, is patient representation models. And the goal there is to have AI models that can understand which patients will respond to which therapeutics.”
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