Paris, France — 11th September 2025. Bioptimus, a start-up that says it is building the world’s first universal foundation model for biology, announced the formation of a Scientific Advisory Board to guide its scientific strategy. The announcement states the board will support the company’s mission to develop large-scale Artificial Intelligence models that accelerate discoveries across the life sciences and change how disease is understood and treated.
The advisory board is chaired by sarah teichmann of the university of cambridge and includes leading figures across computational biology, genomics, oncology, systems biology, and Artificial Intelligence. Named members are andrea califano (columbia university, cz biohub nyc), caroline uhler (mit, broad institute), fabrice andré (gustave roussy), jakob nikolas kather (university hospital dresden), john connolly (parker institute for cancer immunotherapy, national university of singapore), nikolaus rajewsky (bimsb, mdc berlin), and regina barzilay (mit, csail). The company describes this group as an unparalleled network of global expertise that will help shape the scientific direction of its foundation-model work.
Bioptimus says its foundation model is designed to integrate multi-scale biological data, from molecular profiles to whole-organism systems, to enable advances in disease understanding, drug discovery, and synthetic biology. Jean-Philippe Vert, chief executive officer and co-founder of Bioptimus, is quoted saying that solving biology’s deepest challenges requires building models at unprecedented scale and fidelity. Chair sarah teichmann is quoted expressing enthusiasm for helping to shape the future of Artificial Intelligence-driven biology. The announcement also highlights Bioptimus’s first released foundation model, H-optimus, and notes adoption across research, drug discovery, and clinical pipelines. For press enquiries the article lists [email protected].
