Alex Karnal - The Trillion-Dollar Health Revolution - [Invest Like the Best, EP.468]

About this episode

Alex Karnal discusses the health stack and the future of proactive health strategies in drug discovery.

My guest today is Alex Karnal. Alex is the co-founder and managing partner of Braidwell, a life sciences investment firm he built after spending 15 years at Deerfield Management. The frame we use throughout the episode is the health stack. Alex talks about how most of the diseases that will claim most of our lives are already addressable with medicines that exist today. We work through the five layers of what a defensive health strategy looks like, why GLP-1 medicines represent the first commercial proof that people are ready to be proactive about their health, and why PCSK9 inhibitors may ultimately be the more important drug class even though they get far less attention. We also get into the science and business of drug discovery itself — why most of the published literature that AI companies are training on cannot be replicated, what it would mean to have a truly agentic scientific lab running 24 hours a day, and why Alex believes we are now on a deterministic curve toward scientific superintelligence in biology. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Guest: Alex Karnal

Topics covered

• health stack
• defensive health strategy
• drug discovery
• AI in biology
• proactive health

Keywords

• health revolution
• life sciences
• medicines
• scientific superintelligence
• disease management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Braidwell, Deerfield Management, AI companies

Products: GLP-1 medicines, PCSK9 inhibitors

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