E216: When AI meets Cell Engineering

About this episode

Dr Andree Bates discusses the intersection of AI and cell engineering with Armon Sharei, exploring the potential of programmable cells and point-of-care delivery.

Cell therapies have huge potential, but cost, complexity, and centralised manufacturing have kept many of them confined to last-line use. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates speaks with Armon Sharei , Founder and CEO of Portal Biotechnologies , about what happens when AI meets cell engineering, and why point-of-care delivery could make personalised cell programming more practical, scalable, and safer. Armon explains Portal’s core idea: cells are programmable machines. If you can reliably deliver multiple cargoes into cells, you can instruct new behaviours. Portal’s method briefly “squishes” cells through precision pores to disrupt the membrane so external material can enter, opening the door to complex cell engineering without permanent genome edits. They explore where AI fits in: modelling cell behaviour. By combining perturbation experiments, rich readouts, and phenotypic screening, AI can help generate “virtual cell models” that suggest which RNA instructions to deliver to drive specific outcomes. The bottleneck is data at the right complexity, because many effects only appear when multiple pathways are changed at once. A key takeaway is the safety and flexibility of transient…

People in this episode

Host: Dr Andree Bates

Guest: Armon Sharei

Topics covered

• AI
• cell engineering
• cell therapies
• personalized medicine
• point-of-care delivery

Keywords

• AI
• cell therapies
• programmable cells
• RNA reprogramming
• point-of-care

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Portal Biotechnologies

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