The Prototype: Investments In The Space Industry Rebound

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In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at a new AI model for bioengineering, this week’s dueling rocket launches, magnets, lasers and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here.

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Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order that, among other things, legally defines a person’s sex as “immutable” and being equivalent to someone’s sex at conception. But as scientists were quick to point out, there’s no validity to this definition. People don’t start to develop as male or female until about eight to 10 weeks after conception.

Chromosomes themselves can also be misleading. Sometimes a person with two X chromosomes develops and is born with male sexual characteristics, and someone with XY chromosomes can be born with female characteristics. Not to mention there are people born with just one X chromosome and some with multiple chromosomes XXY, XYY–and still lead healthy lives.

Biology is complex and messy, and often defies easy categorization. This week, Scientific American published a fascinating story about the impact of Neanderthal genes on modern day humans, particularly when it comes to mental health. But not all humans have Neanderthal genes (among African populations, there’s virtually none.) So if I have Neanderthal genes, does that make me Neanderthal? Or Homo Sapiens? Or something else? It’s another way biology isn’t so clear cut.

(And don’t even get me started with the brain-bending aspects of quantum mechanics. The double-slit experiment alone is enough to drive you mad if you insist on the universe existing in a way that demands binaries and simple definitions.)

Donald Trump isn’t the first person to try to legislate away reality. In the 19th century, the Indiana House famously passed a bill stating the value of pi was 3.2. The Soviets tried to legislate away genetics and natural selection in favor of a pseudoscience more in line with Communist ideology.

One thing science can give you is an appreciation for the beauty of complexity. Understanding how the world works means keeping your mind open to new possibilities and realizing that what seems firmly true today may be disproven tomorrow. No matter what the laws say.

Trump Administration Delays Funding To Cancer Research

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On Wednesday, the Trump Administration imposed a wide range of restrictions on the National Institutes of Health (NIH): a pause on all external communications, a hiring freeze, a travel ban and, perhaps most crucially, the cancellation of grant review panels, until at least February 1. These panels, where a team of NIH experts review research proposals, are required before the $47.4 billion agency will disburse money to support research by hospitals, universities and biotech companies.

The biggest chunk of this money goes toward cancer research. The NIH’s budget has a $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute, of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. The rest goes to patient care, training and disseminating information related to the disease.

NCI funding has directly led to several of the most widely used cancer drugs today. A research pause threatens this entire ecosystem, which is responsible for helping reduce mortality rates from cancer by 34% since 1991, according to the American Cancer Society.

As my colleague Amy Feldman reports, these delays could additionally impact both researchers and research institutions. Pretty much every major university or medical institution relies on federal grants to fund their research, with big recipients of NIH funding including Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital. A small proportion of funds, including those from federal healthcare research institution ARPA-H, go to healthcare and biomedical startups with promising early-stage research. (ARPA-H had a meeting in San Francisco that was to draw more than 100 people on Thursday abruptly cancelled).

In the short-term, the cancellation of these meetings means that some researchers who expect to receive funds in January will see those funds delayed, while others who had expected grant proposals slated to be reviewed would be subject to the challenges of rescheduling once the pause is lifted — each review requires some two dozen researchers to meet at the same time to assess the scientific merit of proposals in their field once the pause is lifted. It’s not clear if NIH grant review meetings will resume after February 1, when the pause on federal health communications is slated to end.

Even short delays can be a problem in scientific research, said Rebecca Burdine, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University. She has a grant pending to look at congenital heart defects in zebrafish (a precursor to being able to do such studies in humans).But if there isn’t money to keep the fish facility running, it would take a lot of time, effort and cash to restart it.

“People are thinking, ‘If I don’t get this grant, I might have to shut this research down, and it might not ever be feasible to start it back up again,’” she said. The fact that the shutdown comes at a time when the NIH saw its budget pared slightly for fiscal 2024, making it more competitive to get funding on worthwhile projects, has only increased researchers’ anxiety.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: POTENTIAL UNIVERSAL CORONAVIRUS VACCINE

Researchers at MIT and Caltech teamed up to develop a new type of vaccine, which could be potentially used against a broad array of coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 and potentially forestall future pandemics. The vaccine involves attaching tiny pieces of virus that remain unchanged across related strains to a nanoparticle. When injected into animals, the researchers found they created antibodies that fight off diverse coronavirus strains, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid. The research was published in the journal Cell.

SpaceX Starship's 5th test flight

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FINAL FRONTIER: INVESTMENT IN SPACE REBOUNDS

Investment firm Space Capital reports that investment in the space industry rebounded by almost one-third year over year in the fourth quarter 2024, with about $9.5 billion invested in nearly 100 different companies. The firm predicts 2025 will be a landmark year, with several new rockets entering commercial service to shake up the landscape, such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s Neutron and SpaceX’s Starship. Space Capital is particularly bullish about Starship, predicting it will “usher in the next phase of the space economy by accelerating growth in existing markets, enabling entirely new ones, and making existing infrastructure obsolete.

WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK

In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, my colleague Amy Feldman and I wrote about the potential impacts of President Trump’s executive orders on healthcare as well as one of the last acts of the Biden Administration–a major grant to Moderna to develop a vaccine against potential pandemic flu viruses.

SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS

This spring, startup Aurora Innovation will finally be putting its self-driving, long-haul trucks on the road, reports my colleague Alan Ohnsman.

Animal studies of a new stem cell-derived treatment suggest that it can restore normal brain function after a stroke–even if it’s administered weeks later.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory figured out how to “upcycle” plastic trash into more valuable molecules.

Scientists at Aalto University built microscopic spectral sensors that could make it possible to develop portable versions of imaging tools that are currently confined to laboratories or factories.

New algorithms for brain EEGs could potentially make it easier for doctors to diagnose epilepsy.

PRO SCIENCE TIP: MAIL THOSE COUPONS

Coupons are a tried and true way to promote your business, especially to people who may not be aware of it. But even in an era when everyone’s eyes are glued to their phone, it turns out digital coupons aren’t the best way to get sales. Researchers at Japan’s Sophia University found that mailing people coupons, followed by an email, generated over 5 times as many sales as those who were emailed a coupon, a sales differential that was more than enough to offset the expense of printing and mailing. Interestingly enough, mailing the coupon first also generated more sales than a group who got an email first, followed by the mailed coupon. “The higher costs of offline marketing are justified by the substantial increase in sales they drive,” lead study author Taku Togawa said in a statement. The research was published in The Journal of Advertising Research.

WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK

I’m in the middle of reading Sandman Slim, an urban fantasy noir that’s the first in a series of 12 books by Richard Kadrey. So far I’m enormously entertained. It’s reminiscent of the Dresden Files books, but with a more punk rock attitude and nihilistic streak of humor. The hero of the story spent a dozen years in Hell fighting in its gladiator pits, but now he’s back in L.A. and ready for revenge on the folks who sent him to the underworld. Is it fine literature? No, but it is immense pulpy fun and I look forward to binging the rest of the series.