BIO 2025 Spotlights Breakthroughs in AAV Manufacturing and AI-Driven Drug Discovery

New Advances in AAV Manufacturing and AI Drug Discovery at BIO 2025

At the BIO International Convention held in Boston from June 16 to 19, 2025, two companies, 64x Bio and Fauna Bio, introduced products aimed at improving gene therapy manufacturing and accelerating drug target discovery.

64x Bio Launches AAV Apex Suite to Tackle Gene Therapy Production Challenges

64x Bio unveiled its AAV Apex suite, a solution designed to ease bottlenecks in adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy manufacturing. The suite offers suspension-adapted HEK293 cell lines optimized for transient transfection, achieving AAV titers exceeding E15 vg/L. Independent partners have confirmed these high yields across different serotypes and therapeutic payloads.

The technology stems from CEO Alexis Rovner’s postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where the company’s VectorSelect platform was developed. VectorSelect maps cellular programs that enhance AAV production, focusing on the genetic and metabolic factors that boost yield. Instead of tweaking individual genes one by one, 64x Bio uses pooled screening with barcoding to test many genetic perturbations simultaneously, identifying combinations that maximize productivity.

64x Bio has formed partnerships with five global biopharma and contract manufacturing organizations, including Charles River Laboratories, which integrates 64x Bio cell lines into its incubator program. The company also offers custom projects to develop cell lines for unique applications.

Future plans include expanding the Apex suite beyond transient production to stable cell lines that bypass plasmid transfection, and supporting additional viral modalities such as lentiviruses. The goal is to lower manufacturing costs, enabling gene therapies to reach more patients and broader indications.

Fauna Bio Introduces Fauna Brain, an AI Platform for Drug Target Discovery

Fauna Bio launched Fauna Brain, a multi-agent artificial intelligence platform that accelerates the identification of novel drug targets. This system autonomously performs complex research tasks, integrating internal datasets with public databases and scientific literature to score potential targets. Fauna Brain can evaluate a single target in just over two minutes and screen multiple targets in parallel, reducing traditional research costs.

The company’s scientific leadership, including CEO Ashley Zehnder, PhD, has a background in veterinary medicine and cancer biology, with a focus on comparative biology across species. Fauna Bio leverages insights from animals with extreme traits such as hibernation and regeneration to uncover unique mechanisms that may inform human therapies.

Fauna Brain is powered by the Convergence platform, which integrates transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenomic data from 292 species and 24 tissues at multiple time points. The AI identifies druggable targets by comparing genomic data from mammals resistant to fibrosis, cancer, or metabolic disorders.

The AI agents operate much like human experts but at a faster pace, freeing the internal team to focus on validation and partnership projects. Fauna Bio collaborates with pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, on discovery projects in areas like cardiovascular disease and obesity.

Internally, Fauna Bio is developing drug candidates such as Faun1083, derived from genes linked to hibernation biology, which has demonstrated improvement in heart failure models. Other programs focus on neuroprotection, retinal diseases, and potential applications in space health and radiation resistance. The company remains modality agnostic, prioritizing biological strength over delivery methods.

Implications for Product Development Professionals

For those involved in product development, these innovations highlight the importance of integrating biological insights with scalable manufacturing and AI-driven discovery. 64x Bio’s approach to improving AAV production addresses a critical hurdle in gene therapy commercialization: cost-effective, high-yield manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Fauna Bio’s AI platform demonstrates how leveraging cross-species data and advanced computational tools can speed up target identification while keeping R&D costs in check. Teams looking to enhance drug discovery pipelines may benefit from exploring AI tools similar to Fauna Brain that automate complex data analysis.

Both companies exemplify how combining biology, technology, and automation can lead to practical solutions in biopharmaceutical product development.

• Learn more about AI tools for drug discovery and automation at Complete AI Training.
• Explore courses on AI applications in biotech and pharma on Complete AI Training.