Sci­ence is full of wun­derkinds. But 31-year-old Patrick Hsu has al­ready been on the fron­tiers of aca­d­e­m­ic sci­ence, the biotech in­dus­try and now the world of non­prof­it re­search.

Hsu start­ed do­ing lab work as a teenag­er, earn­ing his PhD from Har­vard in bio­chem­istry at 21. From there, he helped de­vel­op the CRISPR gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the lab of the Broad In­sti­tute's Feng Zhang, sub­se­quent­ly join­ing Ed­i­tas Med­i­cine. In 2021, he co-found­ed the Arc In­sti­tute, a Pa­lo Al­to, CA-based non­prof­it re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion fund­ed with $650 mil­lion from back­ers like Stripe CEO Patrick Col­li­son.

Arc has spear­head­ed some lead­ing AI bi­ol­o­gy re­search, most no­tably its re­cent Evo 2 mod­el, a bi­ol­o­gy-spe­cif­ic foun­da­tion mod­el that was trained on mil­lions of genomes, rather than the words and pic­tures of the in­ter­net.

The FDA ap­proved a new rare dis­ease drug that John­son & John­son hopes can com­pete with es­tab­lished med­i­cines — and some that are yet to be ap­proved — and be­come a megablock­buster.

Reg­u­la­tors on Wednes­day gave the thumbs-up to nipocal­imab, which will be brand­ed as Imaavy, for pa­tients 12 and up with gen­er­al­ized myas­the­nia gravis, an au­toim­mune dis­ease that caus­es mus­cle weak­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the eyes, face, throat and lungs. J&J did not im­me­di­ate­ly share in­for­ma­tion about how the drug will be priced.

The ap­proval sets up a show­down with Rystig­go and Zil­brysq — both of which are mar­ket­ed by UCB — as well as ar­genx’s Vyv­gart. Through its $39 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Alex­ion in 2020, As­traZeneca al­so has a pair of ap­proved drugs: Soliris and Ul­tomiris.

No­var­tis plans to ac­quire Reg­u­lus Ther­a­peu­tics for $7.00 per share in cash, or $800 mil­lion, the mi­croR­NA spe­cial­ist said Wednes­day.

The biotech’s share price RGLS jumped more than 135% in pre­mar­ket trad­ing, sur­pass­ing the buy­out price at more than $7.90 apiece.

Reg­u­lus is based in San Diego, which has be­come a biotech hot spot. It will be the fu­ture home to one of No­var­tis’ new bio­med­ical hubs, the com­pa­ny said ear­li­er this month. The hub is part of a 10-site, $23 bil­lion in­vest­ment in Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing and R&D over the com­ing five years.

The deal marks the sec­ond ac­qui­si­tion of the year for No­var­tis. The Swiss drug gi­ant brought one of its for­mer ex­per­i­men­tal car­dio med­i­cines back in­to its fold, pur­chas­ing An­thos Ther­a­peu­tics for $925 mil­lion up­front in Feb­ru­ary. No­var­tis was ac­tive on the M&A front in 2024 as well, with five small deals.