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10x Genomics, Harvard Target Element’s Multiomics Platform in Patent Lawsuit

10x Genomics and Harvard University have sued Element Biosciences, alleging that Element’s AVITI24™ multiomics platform, Teton chemistry, and related services infringe on four university-owned patents exclusively licensed by the genomics and sequencing tools giant—while Element has denied wrongdoing and promises to fight the lawsuit.

At issue are four patents—three of which cover technologies related to methods of analyzing the nucleic acids of a cell, awarded between 2021 and 2023, and all titled, “Compositions and methods for analyte detection”: U.S. Patent Nos. 11,021,737 (‘737), 11,566,276 (‘276), 11,566,277 (‘277).

The fourth patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 12,264,358 (‘358), covers methods of selectively sequencing amplicons in a biological sample, and was awarded in April 2025 under the title, “Method of selectively sequencing amplicons in a biological sample.”

“Element’s employees, customers, collaborators, and partners have practiced and continue to practice (with Element’s knowledge) one or more claims of the Harvard patents by using the AVITI24 platform and Teton workflow,” 10x and Harvard alleged in a court complaint filed May 7 in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. “Through the development and subsequent making, using, selling, offering for sale, and/or importing of the Accused Instrumentalities, Element has and continues to infringe the Harvard Patents.”

At the deadline, the case, 1:26-cv-00538-UNA, had not been assigned to a U.S. District Judge.

10x and Harvard have asked the court to find that Element infringed the four patents in question, declare that Element’s infringement “has been willful and deliberate;” declare each Harvard-owned patent to be “valid and enforceable;” issue a permanent injunction barring Element from using technologies based on the patents—otherwise pay 10x and Harvard “an award of post-judgment royalty to compensate for future infringement;” as well as require Element to pay 10x’s and Harvard’s attorneys’ fees and “such other and further relief as the Court may deem just, reasonable, and proper.”

Element responds

Element responded to the complaint a day later with a statement denying wrongdoing and promising to fight the lawsuit.

“Element strongly disagrees with the allegations made by 10x Genomics and believes the claims are without merit,” the firm stated. “Element will vigorously defend its technology and remains focused on delivering differentiated solutions that expand scientific discovery and customer choice. Element was founded to expand innovation and competition in the life sciences industry. We remain confident in our technology, our intellectual property, and the differentiated value our products provide to customers,” the company added. “We will continue to focus on supporting our customers and advancing the next generation of scientific innovation.”

AVITI24, launched in 2024 as a top-tier successor to its AVITI™ benchtop DNA sequencer and introduced two years earlier as a next-gen sequencing (NGS) platform, aims to enable simultaneous analysis of multiple biological signals—DNA, RNA, proteins, phosphoproteins, and cell structure within single cells—through a 5D multiomics system designed to deliver both spatial, single cell multiomics as well as high-quality, affordable sequencing.

Earlier this year, Element announced plans to begin offering Direct In Sample Sequencing to tissue—both FFPE and fresh frozen—during the second half of this year through AVITI24. “By contrast, 10x’s Xenium product included fresh frozen and FFPE tissue capabilities at the time it was introduced in 2022,” 10x countered in the complaint.

Element has applied AVITI24 to offer customers a combined in situ multiomics and next generation sequencing service through its AVITI24 Technology Access Program.

“Element practices the Harvard patents by using the AVITI24 platform on behalf of its own scientists and researchers and for its AVITI24 TAP customers,” 10x and Harvard alleged in their complaint, adding: “Through the AVITI24 TAP, customers submit samples to Element. Element practices the Harvard Patents by analyzing the samples using the Teton workflow on the AVITI24 platform.”

Stifling or protecting?

In its statement, Element also repeated an argument made by several other companies sued by 10x in recent years: “We believe this lawsuit yet again reflects a broader pattern of using the same patent portfolio to stifle innovations across the industry.”

Countered Michael Schnall-Levin, 10x’s chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, and founding scientist: “We strongly disagree with that characterization. 10x welcomes competition and innovation. “Over the past decade, we’ve invested more than $2 billion in R&D that has transformed how biology is studied. Protecting that work is part of our responsibility as innovators and is what enables us to continue investing in the next generation of technologies.”

Element is the latest of 10x’s rivals to find itself the target of a patent infringement lawsuit filed by 10x. Last year, 10x settled separate lawsuits with Vizgen and Bruker—the latter acquiring NanoString in 2024 from U.S. Bankruptcy Court after the company sought protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, blaming a $31 million jury award assessed against it in 2023 in a patent infringement case filed by 10x.

In October, 10x joined with two licensor partners, Prognosys Biosciences and Roche Sequencing Solutions, to file a pair of federal lawsuits accusing sequencing and multiomics giant Illumina of infringing on nine patents related to spatial biology and single-cell sequencing. Earlier last year, Illumina sued Element, accusing its smaller rival of infringing on five of its patents covering flow cell and imaging technologies used in automated genetic sequencing.

Schnall-Levin said 10x’s latest wave of litigation, starting last year, was not a response to competitive pressures the company has discussed publicly, such as academic customers slowing down spending due to federal budget cuts: “Our litigation is driven by the merits of each case based on clear evidence of others infringing our patents.”

“We consistently act when others infringe our single cell and spatial patents,” Schnall-Levin added.

Speaking with GEN last year, Serge Saxonov, PhD, co-founder and CEO of 10x Genomics, defended the company’s approach to protecting its intellectual property: “If others end up infringing and copying our inventions, then we have to protect them. It is incumbent on us, both as a means of serving our mission and as a means of being fair to all our stakeholders.”

Patents detailed

In their lawsuit, 10x and Harvard allege that the ‘358 amplicon sequencing patent’s claims cover “concrete, unconventional” methods for sequencing RNA molecules in cell or tissue samples by generating circularized RNA molecules by crosslinking or copolymerizing circular DNA, amplifying the circular DNA to produce amplicons, then using selective sequencing primers to sequence different subsets of the amplicons at a time: “These additional unconventional combinations include sequencing by synthesis (Claim 15) and using at least sixteen different selective sequencing primers (Claim 18).”

The other three patents, which cover analyte detection, include claims directed to “concrete, unconventional methods that cover:

  • ‘276: multiplex detection of analytes in biological samples by contacting the biological sample with ‘detection reagents.’
  • ‘277: multiplex detection of analytes in cell and tissue samples by binding ‘detection reagents’ to the cell or tissue sample.
  • ‘737: Multiplex detection of analytes in cell and tissue samples by contacting the cell or tissue sample with ‘detection reagents.’”

10x says the methods of all three patents are practiced by its two spatial biology platforms—the Xenium In Situ single-cell spatial imaging platform, launched in December 2022, and the Atera spatial platform, unveiled last month during the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference.

Atera, which is designed to enable whole-transcriptome spatial biology at scale, offers more plex, throughput, and sensitivity than Xenium, thus enabling whole-transcriptome at scale. Atera includes an all-in-one instrument for sample imaging, liquid handling, hardware stabilization, and onboard analysis.

According to 10x, Atera enables 800 whole transcriptome samples per year, a 500 mm2 imageable area per slide, and four slides per instrument run. Users can choose from Atera WTA, which allows for analysis of 18,000 genes, or Atera Select 1,000 custom gene panels with optional stacking of up to two 1,000-gene panels. Compared to Xenium, Atera has four times the throughput, six times higher plex capacity for targeted assays, 3.6x higher plex, and 2–3x sensitivity for whole transcriptome assays.

10x has said it plans to make Atera available in the second half of this year, though it has begun taking orders for the Atera, which is list-priced at $495,000 and measures roughly 53” x 36” x 64” or (4.42 ft × 3 ft × 5.33 ft).

Acquired for $350M

Xenium In Situ was developed by 10x using technology from ReadCoor, a company that 10x acquired in 2020 for $350 million. In 2016, Harvard licensed patents covering the technology exclusively to ReadCoor, a company founded by George M. Church, PhD, of Harvard Medical School.

Church and Je Hyuk Lee, MD, PhD, founder of Terrain Life Science and an investigator who developed Fluorescent In Situ Sequencing while a research fellow in Church’s lab more than a decade ago, are listed as first and second investors on all four patents.

The analyte detection patents (‘737, ‘276, and ‘277) also list two other Church lab alumni: Daniel Levner, PhD, co-founder and CTO of Emulate; and Michael Super, PhD, senior director, translational R&D with the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, as co-inventors.

The amplicon sequencing patent (‘358) lists as co-inventors two other Church lab alumni: Richard C. Terry, who became ReadCoor’s CEO before his current post as CEO, CTO, and founder of cell therapy manufacturer Harton, and Evan R. Daugharthy, PhD, Harton’s president, CSO, and founder.

The post 10x Genomics, Harvard Target Element’s Multiomics Platform in Patent Lawsuit appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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Males who discuss suicide seek help less often than females, report finds

Death by suicide is a male emergency. Although three times as many women as men report suicidal ideation and attempts, the vast majority of deaths by suicide in the U.S. — up to 80% — are among men. The reasons: higher impulsivity, lower reported fear of death, and, crucially, easy access to guns. 

The most recent report from Crisis Text Line — a nonprofit working with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to provide free and confidential text-based mental health support —  sheds light on another explanation: Men reach out for help a lot less than women. 

Read the rest…

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Acute Myeloid Leukemia Therapy Improved by CRISPR Stem Cell Transplant

For highly aggressive types of blood cancer, stem cell transplantation is often the only potentially curative therapy. Yet, these cancers can often return even after a transplant. Notably, CAR T cell therapy has not been effective against all blood cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

A recent Phase I/II multicenter clinical trial, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, shows that a stem cell transplant, that removes CD33 from donor cells using CRISPR, can help prevent cancer recurrence.

The work was published in Nature Medicine and titled, “CRISPR−Cas9 CD33-deleted allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation with gemtuzumab ozogamicin maintenance in AML: a Phase I/II trial.” The study was conducted at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, and 14 other sites in the U.S. and Canada. 30 adult patients with AML or MDS at high risk of relapse received the stem cell transplant.

Myeloid cancers, such as AML and MDS, are difficult to treat with CAR T cells because the same proteins targets are present on both cancer cells and healthy myeloid cells, leading to toxicity risks.

“We are encouraged by the results of this study showing that a CD33-deleted stem cell transplant looks very similar to the outcomes of standard stem cell transplantation,” said John DiPersio, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at WashU Medicine and corresponding author of the study. “In the future, we are hopeful we will be able to combine this with CD33-targeted immunotherapies, such as CAR T cells, and improve treatment options for patients with these very aggressive blood cancers.”

As proof of concept, patients also received a maintenance therapy that targets CD33, after completion of the stem cell transplant. While not a CD33-targeted CAR T cell, the maintenance therapy, called gemtuzumab ozogamicin, is an engineered antibody that targets CD33 and carries an anti-cancer drug. Gemtuzumab ozogamicin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat CD33-positive AML and is in clinical trials for CD33-positive MDS. While it helps prevent relapse, the drug’s use is limited because it can cause liver toxicity and damage to blood cells, including dangerously low counts of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.

All patients from the trial achieved engraftment of their transplanted stem cells by day 28. Some patients met this goal sooner with platelet production returning by day 16 on average. These timeframes are comparable to those of standard transplanted stem cells.

Average survival was just over 14 months. Nineteen patients received at least one cycle of the antibody maintenance therapy as part of a dose-escalation protocol. The authors found that patients maintained blood cell counts across all doses, suggesting that the gene-edited stem cell transplant protected patients from low blood cell counts typically seen following a standard stem cell transplant.

DiPersio and colleagues published a single case study detailing a patient with high-risk AML who received a CD33-deleted stem cell transplant. Upon relapse after the transplant, the patient received a CD33-targeted CAR T cell therapy, which used T cells from the same donor who provided the stem cell transplant.

The treatment resulted in complete remission and the patient remains cancer free over one year after receiving the CAR T cell therapy. Normal blood cell production returned with all blood cells lacking CD33, providing evidence that the genetically engineered donor cells had established themselves in the bone marrow.

DiPersio said the results of the study lay the groundwork for developing paired CD33-deleted stem cell transplant and CD33-targeted immunotherapy interventions that avoid destruction of healthy donor cells in the course of cancer treatment.

The post Acute Myeloid Leukemia Therapy Improved by CRISPR Stem Cell Transplant appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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Effects of Patient Portal Message Framing on Treatment Preferences and Expectations for Degenerative Meniscus Tears: Randomized Exploratory Cross-Sectional Survey Study

<strong>Background:</strong> Degenerative meniscus tears are common in middle-aged and older adults, and current guidelines favor nonoperative care. As patients increasingly turn to portal systems to view imaging results and communicate with their physicians, patient-facing wording may shape downstream treatment preferences and expectations. <strong>Objective:</strong> This study aimed to determine whether subtle differences in physician message framing about an identical degenerative meniscus tear influence preferred management, expectations for improvement with conservative therapy, and satisfaction when a physician recommends a different plan. <strong>Methods:</strong> A cross-sectional 37-question survey was developed de novo and distributed in January 2026 to lay adults in the United States (≥18 years) recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Respondents were presented with a standardized vignette of an adult aged 60 years with knee pain due to a degenerative meniscus tear. Participants were randomized in a 1:1:1 fashion into 3 physician portal message framing groups: neutral, degenerative, and damage. Outcomes were the preferred next step in treatment, expected improvement with physical therapy, and retained satisfaction under physician-respondent disagreement. Chi-square and Fisher exact tests were used to compare categorical variables. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to assess associations between framing groups. <strong>Results:</strong> Of the 266 completed responses, 195 (73.3%) were included for analysis (neutral: n=67, 34.4%; degenerative: n=63, 32.3%; damage: n=65, 33.3%). Treatment preferences differed significantly across groups (<i>χ</i><sup>2</sup><sub>2</sub>=6.1; <i>P</i>=.047), and the damage group was significantly more likely to prefer aggressive interventions (odds ratio 2.43, 95% CI 1.17-5.06; <i>P</i>=.02). Expectations for physical therapy success differed significantly (<i>χ</i><sup>2</sup><sub>4</sub>=12.3; <i>P</i>=.02), with the damage group being most pessimistic about conservative care. Retained satisfaction under physician-respondent disagreement did not differ by framing group (<i>χ</i><sup>2</sup><sub>6</sub>=6.7; <i>P</i>=.35) but did differ significantly by initial treatment preference (<i>P</i>=.03) and was the lowest among respondents preferring steroid injection. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> In this exploratory investigation, subtle differences in physician portal message framing regarding a magnetic resonance imaging impression of a degenerative meniscus tear were associated with shifts in treatment preferences and confidence in conservative care. These findings suggest that brief physician portal communications may be associated with shifts in hypothetical patient expectations and treatment preferences before clinical counseling occurs. <strong>Trial Registration:</strong>
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The Download: a Nobel winner on AI, and the case for fixing everything

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Three things in AI to watch, according to a Nobel-winning economist

A few months before he won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024, Daron Acemoglu published a paper that earned him few fans in Silicon Valley. He argued that AI would give only a small boost to US productivity and would not eliminate the need for human work.

Two years later, Acemoglu’s measured take has not caught on. The technology has advanced quite a bit since his cautious predictions, but the data is still largely on his side. 

MIT Technology Review spoke with him to understand if any of the latest developments have changed his thesis. Here are the three things Acemoglu is paying closest attention to in AI right now.

—James O’Donnell

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday. 

The case for fixing everything

Stewart Brand, the counterculture icon and tech industry legend, considers maintenance a “civilizational” act. His new book argues that taking responsibility for maintaining something, whether a motorcycle, a monument, or the planet, can be radical.

Brand argues that maintainers haven’t gotten the laurels they deserve—and he’s right. Yet his vision of maintenance often feels solitary: profound, but more about personal fulfillment than tending to a shared world or making it better.

Read the full review of his handsome new book, Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One.

—Lee Vinsel

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech, a cofounder of The Maintainers, and the host of Peoples & Things, a podcast about human life with technology.

This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, which is all about nature. Subscribe now to read the full issue and receive future print copies once they land.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The first zero-day exploit built by AI has been discovered
Google spotted and stopped the attempted “mass exploitation event.” (CNBC)
+ The hackers used AI to discover an unknown bug. (NYT $)
+ AI-powered hacking has exploded into an industrial-scale threat. (Guardian)
+ New tools are simplifying online crime. (MIT Technology Review)

2 OpenAI just launched its answer to Claude Mythos
Daybreak patches vulnerabilities before attackers find them. (The Verge)
+ Sam Altman said it will “continuously secure software.” (Gizmodo)
+ It will rival Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, which arrived a month ago. (BBC)
+ OpenAI is allowing wider access to its cyber models than Anthropic. (CNBC)

3 Trump is heading to China to spread the gospel of American tech
While taking cues from Beijing’s more stringent approach. (Guardian)
+ But investors want Trump and Xi to stay out of AI’s way. (Reuters $)
+ Elon Musk and Tim Cook are joining him on the trip this week. (BBC)

4 Ilya Sutskever has testified on Sam Altman’s “pattern of lying”
OpenAI co-founder Sutskever took the stand in the Altman v. Musk trial. (BI)
+ He said he spent a year gathering proof of Altman’s dishonesty. (Reuters $)
+ But he also added to OpenAI’s defense. (Wired $)
+ While Satya Nadella called attempts to remove Altman “amateur city.” (FT $)
+ Here’s what happened last week in the trial. (MIT Technology Review)

5 A new hantavirus vaccine is in the works
Moderna and Korea University are developing an mRNA vaccine. (Wired $)
+ Here’s what you need to know about the cruise ship outbreak. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Texas has sued Netflix over alleged data harvesting and “addictive” design
AG Ken Paxton accuses Netflix of secretly collecting and selling user data. (Quartz)
+ And spying on children while deliberately fostering addiction. (Guardian)

7 A data center guzzled 30 million gallons of water—and no one noticed
The curious case serves as a warning for other data center projects. (Ars Technica)

8 Europe is reportedly selling spyware to human rights abusers
EU states allegedly sold the tech to countries violating rights. (Bloomberg $)

9 The US government’s AI vetting announcement has mysteriously vanished
It had detailed a security test agreement with Google, xAI, and Microsoft. (Gizmodo)

10 Amazon staff are using AI for pointless tasks just to inflate usage scores
In a bid to impress managers. (FT $)
+ An AI expert says we should stop using AI so much. (MIT Technology Review)


Quote of the day

“This is like the cheating husband complaining about the cheating wife.” 

—Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown Law School, tells the New York Times that Elon Musk’s hypocrisy over OpenAI becoming a for-profit company will undermine his courtroom battle with Sam Altman.

One More Thing

""

STUART BRADFORD


How sounds can turn us on to the wonders of the universe

For decades, astronomy has relied on visual information to make sense of the cosmos: images, charts, and graphs. Now, some researchers are trying something different: listening to the universe.

Using sonification, the process of turning information into sound, they’re helping blind and visually impaired researchers explore the cosmos—and even uncover patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. The approach is spreading beyond astronomy into fields like climate science, navigation, and education.

Discover how sound could make science more accessible—and even more revealing.

—Corey S. Powell

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ This musical mashup beautifully blends LCD Soundsystem with Twin Peaks.
+ Match your speculative ideas to sci-fi stories with the Extrapolated Futures Archive.
+ A live-action animation Coyote vs. ACME is coming soon—and the first trailer just dropped.
+ Want to surf elsewhere in the galaxy? Here’s what it would be like to catch waves on distant planets.

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STAT+: In the battle of sepsis algorithms, performance alone doesn’t predict victory

Five years ago, the bottom fell out of sepsis prediction software. Hundreds of hospitals had adopted an algorithm from electronic health record company Epic that promised to alert physicians to predicted cases of sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to infection that kills more than 350,000 people in the United States every year. 

The AI was a technical flop. Despite its results on paper, the technology failed to perform in the real world, and sent so many alerts that doctors tuned them out or hospitals turned them off. 

Half a decade on, new sepsis models are hitting the scene. Epic released a retooled version of its own algorithm. Startups are testing their models in health systems. A team uses large language models to mine clinical notes for signs of sepsis. And on Tuesday, a sepsis flagging device from Bayesian Health, with origins at Johns Hopkins, announced it has received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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STAT+: Colombia wins a key court ruling over a compulsory license issued for an HIV medicine

A South American court upheld the steps taken by the Colombian government when it issued a compulsory license two years ago for an HIV medicine, a move that confirmed the legal framework for using such an approach in the future.

The Court of Justice of the Andean Community — a tribunal that settles trade, intellectual property, and labor disputes for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru — also ruled that the Colombian government had properly justified the reasons for issuing a license and appropriately set an expiration date for its license.

“The court concluded that Colombia did not incur a breach of Andean regulations, since such measures are valid when there are reasons of public interest,” the health ministry said in a statement. “Colombia adequately complied with the obligation to determine the duration of the compulsory license” for the medicine, which is sold by ViiV Healthcare.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Factors Predicting Poor Outcomes in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Uncovered

Five factors predicting death or serious complications in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick, have been uncovered in a study led by the University of Virginia.

“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, with a prevalence of one in 500 in the U.S., is the most frequent cause of sudden cardiac death in young individuals,” explain lead author Christopher Kramer, MD, a researcher at University of Virginia Health, in JAMA.

“Although some patients remain asymptomatic, others develop effort intolerance, exertional angina, progressive heart failure, atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death.”

There is some disagreement about how best to predict risk in patients diagnosed with this condition, which is inherited in 60% of cases, with different factors used for assessment in different places and current guidelines focusing on sudden cardiac death risk and not other serious adverse events such as the risk for heart failure.

This study enrolled 2,698 hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients from 44 sites across North America and Europe between 2014 and 2017 and followed them for an average of 6.9 years. The participants underwent wide ranging tests on enrollment including cardiac magnetic resonance imaging with core laboratory analysis, genetic testing of 36 cardiomyopathy genes, blood biomarker analysis, and detailed clinical assessments. Patients with pre-existing implantable cardioverter defibrillators, often prescribed to patients with this condition to avert sudden cardiac death, were excluded.

Patients were reviewed once a year by telephone, with an average follow-up time of around seven years. Records were reviewed if events occurred during the study.

Overall, 117 events—death, nonfatal sustained ventricular arrhythmias requiring cardioversion or defibrillation, left ventricular assist device implant or heart transplant—occurred in 104 participants during the follow up period.

Five factors were significant predictors of a poor outcome. These included the extent of scarring on the heart measured by imaging, heart muscle size, and heart chamber size with all three predicting worse outcomes with greater measures. The other two factors were history of heart failure and higher levels of a blood protein marker of heart stress, NT-proBNP.

“Current risk prediction guidelines for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy are imperfect, as they predict only sudden cardiac death, and not heart failure or other fatal and nonfatal cardiac adverse events,” said Kramer in a press statement. “This study is a major advance in that it provides evidence that incorporating these additional assessment methods better predicts risk of adverse outcomes.”

The team plan to continue this work and to develop a risk score as well as to seek external validation from independent databases and researchers using similar measures of risk.

The post Factors Predicting Poor Outcomes in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Uncovered appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.

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STAT+: Medicare’s miss on Alzheimer’s drug spending

This is the online version of STAT’s weekly email newsletter Health Care Inc. Sign up here.

Did you know the U.S. Mint requires gold coins to be made with American-made gold, but instead it gets illegally mined gold that can be traced back to a Colombian drug cartel? Truly mind-blowing stuff from this New York Times investigation. Let me know what the health care angle is on that one: bob.herman@statnews.com.

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future

Two years ago, my old pal Rachel Cohrs Zhang and I reported how Medicare’s actuaries predicted the new Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi would cost the program $3.5 billion in 2025. It turns out that prediction was way off.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Three things in AI to watch, according to a Nobel-winning economist

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

A few months before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024, Daron Acemoglu published a paper that earned him few fans in Silicon Valley. Contrary to what Big Tech CEOs had been promising—an overhaul of all white-collar work—Acemoglu estimated that AI would give only a small boost to US productivity and would not obviate the need for human work. It’s okay at automating certain tasks, he wrote, but some jobs will be perfectly fine.

Two years later, Acemoglu’s measured take has not caught on. Chatter about an AI jobs apocalypse pops up everywhere from Senator Bernie Sanders’s rallies to conversations I overhear in line at the grocery store. Some previously skeptical economists have gotten more open to the idea that something seismic could be coming with AI. A California gubernatorial candidate said last week that he wants to tax corporate AI use and pay victims of “AI-driven layoffs.” 

On the one hand, the data is still on Acemoglu’s side; studies repeatedly find that AI is not affecting employment rates or layoffs. But the technology has advanced quite a bit since his cautious predictions. I spoke with him to understand if any of the latest developments in AI have changed his thesis, and to find out what does worry him these days if not imminent AGI.

AI agents

One of the biggest technical leaps in AI since Acemoglu’s paper has been agentic AI, or tools that can go beyond chatbots and operate on their own to complete the goal you give them. Because they can work independently rather than just answering questions, companies are increasingly pitching agents as a one-to-many replacement for human workers.

“I think that’s just a losing proposition,” Acemoglu says. He thinks agents are better thought of as tools to augment particular pieces of someone’s work than something malleable enough to handle a person’s whole job.

One reason has to do with all the various tasks that go into a job, something Acemoglu has been researching in his work on AI since 2018. For example, an x-ray technician juggles 30 different tasks, from taking down patient histories to organizing archives of mammogram images. A worker can naturally switch between formats, databases, and working styles to do this, Acemoglu says, but how many individual tools or protocols would an AI require to do the same?

Whether or not agents will supercharge AI’s impact on jobs will come down to whether they can eventually handle the orchestration between tasks that humans do naturally. AI companies are in heated competition to prove that their AI agents can work independently for ever longer periods without making mistakes, sometimes exaggerating the results—but Acemoglu says many jobs will be spared from an AI takeover if agents can’t fluidly switch between tasks.

The new hiring spree

For years Big Tech has been offering staggering salaries to recruit AI researchers. But I asked Acemoglu about a different hiring spree I’ve noticed: AI companies are all building in-house economics teams.

OpenAI hired Ronnie Chatterji from Duke University in 2024 to be its chief economist and announced last year that Chatterji will work with Jason Furman—Harvard economist and former advisor to Barack Obama—to research AI and jobs. Anthropic has convened a group of 10 leading economists to do similar work. And just last week, Google DeepMind announced it had hired Alex Imas, an economist from the University of Chicago, to be its “director of AGI economics.”

Acemoglu has noticed colleagues getting snatched up for these roles too. “It makes sense,” he says: AI companies are well aware that public skepticism about AI, in large part due to job concerns, is growing. And they have strong incentives to shape the economic narrative around their technology (consider OpenAI’s latest proposal for a new era of industrial policy).

“What I hope we won’t get,” Acemoglu says, “is that they’re interested in economists just to further their viewpoints or further the hype.” That tension hangs over the emerging field of “AI economics”; it’s concerning that some of the most influential research about AI’s impact on work may increasingly come from the companies with the most to gain from favorable conclusions.

AI apps

I don’t think of AI as hard to use; most of us interact with it via chatbots that use plain language. But Acemoglu says we should consider how it compares with the sort of software that kicked off earlier tech transformations, like PowerPoint for slide decks and Word for documents. 

“Anybody could install these on their computer and get them to do the things that they want them to do,” he says. They spread accordingly. 

“We have not seen the development of apps based on AI that have the same usability,” he says. Even if anyone can chat with an AI model, it tends to take a while for the average worker to get practical and productive use out of it. That’s part of the reason why AI has not yet shown any seismic impact on the job market or the economy. One of the key signals Acemoglu is watching, then, is the creation of apps that make AI easier to use. 

But he acknowledges that for a while, we’re going to see all sorts of conflicting evidence about AI: anecdotes that college grads are finding the job market worse and worse, but no noticeable effect of AI on productivity, for example. “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty,” he says. And that’s the most telling thing about the AI economy right now: the certainty of the rhetoric alongside the uncertainty of everything else.