March 23, 2022

Cue the Jaws music in preparation for today's creepy shark story. If it makes you feel better, sharks are only the 10th deadliest animal in the world. A better use of your energy would be fearing freshwater snails, which are much deadlier than sharks. If you see one in the wild, don't have an escar-go at them.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is shaking up the pharmaceutical industry. Today's Wrap covers its recent breakthroughs, and the concerns that abound. 

― Key Stories

All My Birds Are Dead
Overview

• The US is facing its worst bird flu outbreak since 2015
• On Tuesday, Nebraska officials said that 570,000+ chickens in the state would be killed after a lethal bird flu strain was found within a flock
• The cull brings the total number of chickens and turkeys killed since February 9, when this year’s bird flu was first identified in the US, to above 13M
• Zoos are closing their aviaries and moving exhibit birds like flamingos and penguins indoors
• It's the US' worst bird flu outbreak since 2015, when nearly 50M turkeys and chickens were killed. Health officials say the virus poses a low risk to humans

Bynes Released from Conservatorship

• A judge ended Amanda Bynes' conservatorship after 9 years
• Since 2013, when Bynes was forcibly hospitalized over concerns for her mental health, Bynes' mother has had total control over her personal affairs
• As a teen, Bynes starred in Nickelodeon TV shows All That and The Amanda Show, and movies She’s the Man and What a Girl Wants. She retired from acting in 2010, at 24 years old
• The news comes months after a judge ended Britney Spears' conservatorship, which gave her father control over her personal and financial decisions

Colombia Launches Shark Hunt

• Groups of locals on the Colombian island of San Andrés say they are in the fight of their lives against a tiger shark
• Last Friday, a tiger shark bit and killed an Italian tourist. The groups have since mobilized to kill the shark responsible
• So far, they’ve killed a nurse shark, which is a different species that doesn’t usually attack humans
• Tiger sharks are a protected species in Colombia. While hunting them is illegal and punishable with up to 9 years in jail, locals have told authorities that if they don't act, “the shark is going to kill us”

Navalny Sentenced to 9 More Years
Overview

• A Russian court sentenced Alexei Navalny, the government's most notable critic, to 9 more years in prison
• Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and politician, built a large social media following by highlighting Russian government corruption. He was poisoned in August 2020 and arrested in January 2021
• Prosecutors accused Navalny of stealing from his own anti-corruption foundation. He had already been serving a 3.5-year sentence given last February
• In the trial Navalny said, “I insulted your dark lord Putin by not only surviving, but by returning...Now, he will increase my prison terms forever”

See yesterday's results below the Wrap!

 Popcorn

Culture & Sports 

• Heeerreee's Joseph! A long-awaited biopic series starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Johnny Carson is on the market 
• The world's #1 women's tennis player, 25-yo Ash Barty, announced a surprise early retirement. She won the Aussie Open 2 months ago
• Good 4 U, music industry: The global music industry was worth $26B in 2021, the highest level on record. Subscription revenue boomed

• How 'bout them apples? Apple is now worth ~11 Disneys, based on market valuations. Apple's stock is up 37.7% over the last year
• General mayhem: General Motors is recalling more than 740k small SUVs due to excessively bright headlight beams
• Tesla opened its first European factory outside Berlin. Elon Musk did a celebratory dance at the ceremony, and Tesla shares jumped 6.8%

• 2 Michigan brothers wrongfully convicted for murder were released from prison after spending 25 years behind bars
• Bienvenidos a Miami: Miami International Airport broke its record again for "busiest day ever" on Sunday, March 13
• Canadian police revealed that a car traveling at 93 mph on the wrong side of the road was an 11-yo boy and not a drunk driver
• 37 reasons why BuzzFeed News has to go: BuzzFeed investors have urged the company to shutter its news org, which is guzzling money

― Roca Wrap

A Newsletter Exclusive

Depending on if you are a glass-half-full type or not, AI may be the best – or worst – thing to happen to pharmaceuticals in years. 

In January 2020, a company called BenevolentAI was researching potential drugs to treat Covid. They weren’t doing it manually, though: They were using AI. Within 4 days, its algorithms had processed 50M medical articles and made a recommendation: Repurpose the arthritis drug baricitinib to treat Covid. Baricitinib has since proved highly effective in reducing Covid mortality. It’s the first AI-recommended drug ever to be widely repurposed.

That breakthrough and others have shed light on how data scientists and pharmaceutical companies are using AI to create new medicines. They feed their algorithms mass amounts of data – including journal articles, trial results, and sequences of genes and proteins – and see if the AI spots trends in treatments. Depending on the task, algorithms can either recommend repurposing an existing drug or designing a totally new one. 

While people have been betting on this technology for years, the bets are getting bigger. Last year, about $2B of venture capital investment went into AI drug development, up from under $100M in 2016. 

Similarly, Moderna used AI to optimize its Covid vaccine, allowing the first batch to be produced in just 42 days. Last year, Google released an AI tool that predicts the shape of all human proteins, potentially opening up huge opportunities in drug development. And 15 AI-designed drugs are now in clinical trials, although no AI-designed drug has yet been approved.  

Some hope AI pharma will open up a golden age of drug research, leading to discovery of medicines and treatments at an unprecedented rate. Others' expectations are more tempered, and hope the tech cuts the average $2.7B and 10 years it takes to bring a new drug to market.

And others are scared about misuse of the AI. As described in a paper released last week, the algorithms can be used to find deadly compounds – not just beneficial ones. 

In that paper, researchers at a North Carolina-based pharma company asked an algorithm to seek toxicity in its recommendations, rather than reduce it. Within 6 hours, the AI generated a list of 40,000 toxic chemical structures that could be easily synthesized and would likely be absorbed by the human body. The recommended compounds included many known poisons, as well as many unknown ones – some of which it predicted would be deadlier than anything that currently exists. 

One of the authors called the finding ​”a jaw-drop moment.” She and her colleagues had turned the promising tech upside down, from a finder of medicines to a “generator of likely deadly molecules.” ​

So while AI may bring in a golden age of pharmaceuticals, it may just also do the opposite.

 Games

1. Fort Worth, El Paso, Arlington, Corpus Christi
2. Carmel, Fishers, Bloomington, Hammond
3. Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, Cary, Wilmington
4. Racine, Waukesha, Eau Claire, Oshkosh

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