Soham Sankaran
@soh.am
I run @popvax.com (https://popvax.com). We develop mRNA vaccines using computational protein design, including a broadly-protective COVID-19 vax to preempt new variants. I write at https://infinitesunrise.com, and I used to build robots (https://soh.am).
I've finally published a long-gestating piece about why India has largely failed at research & development, and inventing novel products downstream of R&D, over the past few decades, as well as what we can do about it.
www.infinitesunrise.com/p/overcoming...
www.infinitesunrise.com/p/overcoming...
Overcoming India's technological cowardice
How can we learn to invent tomorrow?
www.infinitesunrise.com
May 28, 2025 at 9:12 PM
I've finally published a long-gestating piece about why India has largely failed at research & development, and inventing novel products downstream of R&D, over the past few decades, as well as what we can do about it.
www.infinitesunrise.com/p/overcoming...
www.infinitesunrise.com/p/overcoming...
Reposted by Soham Sankaran
It is indeed striking how much AF3-based methods struggle to generalize to novel protein-ligand interfaces. It is also interesting that there remains a meaningful delta between AF3 and other reproductions at the most difficult generalization task (~25% vs ~13% success rate, so roughly double).
In this work, we explored how training data similarity impacts protein-ligand prediction accuracy—an overlooked aspect in recent benchmarks. Our analysis shows that the current co-folding methods struggle to generalize beyond ligand poses in their training data.(2/n)
February 8, 2025 at 2:08 PM
It is indeed striking how much AF3-based methods struggle to generalize to novel protein-ligand interfaces. It is also interesting that there remains a meaningful delta between AF3 and other reproductions at the most difficult generalization task (~25% vs ~13% success rate, so roughly double).
Reposted by Soham Sankaran
It's long seemed that molecular biology is a natural home for ML interpretability research, given the maturity of human-constructed models of biological mechanisms—permitting direct comparison with their ML-derived counterparts—unlike vision and NLP. Our first foray below👇.
Can we learn protein biology from a language model?
In new work led by @liambai.bsky.social and me, we explore how sparse autoencoders can help us understand biology—going from mechanistic interpretability to mechanistic biology.
In new work led by @liambai.bsky.social and me, we explore how sparse autoencoders can help us understand biology—going from mechanistic interpretability to mechanistic biology.
February 10, 2025 at 4:15 PM
It's long seemed that molecular biology is a natural home for ML interpretability research, given the maturity of human-constructed models of biological mechanisms—permitting direct comparison with their ML-derived counterparts—unlike vision and NLP. Our first foray below👇.
I'm delighted to announce that PopVax (@popvax.com) has been awarded $2M by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (@bardagov.bsky.social) as a winner of the first stage of BARDA’s Patch Forward Prize for our seasonal influenza vaccine, along with our partner LTS. (1/12)
February 10, 2025 at 1:03 PM
I'm delighted to announce that PopVax (@popvax.com) has been awarded $2M by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (@bardagov.bsky.social) as a winner of the first stage of BARDA’s Patch Forward Prize for our seasonal influenza vaccine, along with our partner LTS. (1/12)
Reposted by Soham Sankaran
Rare bird flu strain #H5N9 found in California flock infected with #H5N1, reports @washingtonpost.com.
"Culling flocks is costly," says @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social . "We see that in the price of eggs, and the continued infection of cows will only add to the economic burden."
Read more ⤵️
"Culling flocks is costly," says @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social . "We see that in the price of eggs, and the continued infection of cows will only add to the economic burden."
Read more ⤵️
Rare bird flu strain found in California raises potential of wider spread
First U.S. detection of virulent H5N9 strain, at a California duck farm, draws scrutiny as evidence of genetic reassortment that could trigger human outbreaks.
www.washingtonpost.com
January 29, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Rare bird flu strain #H5N9 found in California flock infected with #H5N1, reports @washingtonpost.com.
"Culling flocks is costly," says @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social . "We see that in the price of eggs, and the continued infection of cows will only add to the economic burden."
Read more ⤵️
"Culling flocks is costly," says @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social . "We see that in the price of eggs, and the continued infection of cows will only add to the economic burden."
Read more ⤵️
Reposted by Soham Sankaran
So here's an interesting development...
It's been observed that shingles vaccination with the live attenuated vaccine Zostavax:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
and also with the (much more effective) recombinant vaccine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
But, though the study designs are strong...
It's been observed that shingles vaccination with the live attenuated vaccine Zostavax:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
and also with the (much more effective) recombinant vaccine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
But, though the study designs are strong...
The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia - Nature Medicine
A natural experiment including more than 200,000 people who received a shingles vaccine reveals that, within 6 years of vaccination, the recombinant vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia t...
www.nature.com
January 7, 2025 at 9:54 PM
So here's an interesting development...
It's been observed that shingles vaccination with the live attenuated vaccine Zostavax:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
and also with the (much more effective) recombinant vaccine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
But, though the study designs are strong...
It's been observed that shingles vaccination with the live attenuated vaccine Zostavax:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
and also with the (much more effective) recombinant vaccine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
But, though the study designs are strong...
I've written a short piece about the potent, broadly-protective flu vaccines we're developing at PopVax to protect against both seasonal influenza strains and potential pandemic influenza such as the H5N1 strains currently circulating in cows
chronicles.popvax.com/p/potent-bro...
(thread below)
chronicles.popvax.com/p/potent-bro...
(thread below)
Potent, broadly-protective flu vaccines to protect against potential pandemic influenza viruses such as H5N1
PopVax’s influenza vaccine designs elicit as much as 250x greater antibody titer against seasonal strains than existing approved flu vaccines, as well as robust antibody titer against H5N1
chronicles.popvax.com
January 3, 2025 at 2:50 PM
I've written a short piece about the potent, broadly-protective flu vaccines we're developing at PopVax to protect against both seasonal influenza strains and potential pandemic influenza such as the H5N1 strains currently circulating in cows
chronicles.popvax.com/p/potent-bro...
(thread below)
chronicles.popvax.com/p/potent-bro...
(thread below)
I'm co-hosting the first Builders in Biology meetup with Samarth Jajoo in Hyderabad on Jan 7 at the @popvax.com lab. It's an informal gathering to discuss research ideas people are excited about. Please feel free to register here if you're interested: lu.ma/po606g0h
HYD: builders in biology · Luma
Casual evening of discussing ideas on the frontier of biology — come chat about whatever research you're excited to do. Snacks provided!
Organized by Silver…
lu.ma
January 2, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I'm co-hosting the first Builders in Biology meetup with Samarth Jajoo in Hyderabad on Jan 7 at the @popvax.com lab. It's an informal gathering to discuss research ideas people are excited about. Please feel free to register here if you're interested: lu.ma/po606g0h
I recently spoke at Ethereum Devcon about PopVax (@popvax.com)'s work developing novel mRNA vaccines to save 1 million lives each year, as part of a series of talks organized by Vitalik Buterin (@vitalik.ca) around his d/acc vision – defensive, differential, and decentralized accelerationism. (1/4)
December 23, 2024 at 7:50 AM
I recently spoke at Ethereum Devcon about PopVax (@popvax.com)'s work developing novel mRNA vaccines to save 1 million lives each year, as part of a series of talks organized by Vitalik Buterin (@vitalik.ca) around his d/acc vision – defensive, differential, and decentralized accelerationism. (1/4)
Hey folks, I'll be in NYC Sunday & Monday -- would love to catch up with folks working on any subset of vaccines, ML for bio, robotics, and public policy. Feel free to comment here or email me at my_first_name [at] popvax dot com.
December 7, 2024 at 9:19 PM
Hey folks, I'll be in NYC Sunday & Monday -- would love to catch up with folks working on any subset of vaccines, ML for bio, robotics, and public policy. Feel free to comment here or email me at my_first_name [at] popvax dot com.
PopVax (@popvax.com) is pleased to announce that NIAID (@niaidnews.bsky.social), part of the US National Institutes of Health, will conduct & sponsor the Phase I clinical trial of PopVax’s next-generation mRNA COVID-19 vaccine as part of the U.S. Government’s Project NextGen. (1/5)
November 20, 2024 at 10:08 AM
PopVax (@popvax.com) is pleased to announce that NIAID (@niaidnews.bsky.social), part of the US National Institutes of Health, will conduct & sponsor the Phase I clinical trial of PopVax’s next-generation mRNA COVID-19 vaccine as part of the U.S. Government’s Project NextGen. (1/5)