Yale Prof's Startup CellType Uses LLMs to Simulate Biology, Finds Cancer Therapy
david_van_dijk · x · 2026-08-12
Yale professor David Van Dijk discussed his startup CellType (backed by YC W26) on a podcast, highlighting their work on Cell2Sentence. The project adapts LLM paradigms to simulate human biology rather than just predicting text.
Noting that 9 in 10 drugs fail in clinical trials, Van Dijk shared that this approach has already led to the discovery of a real cancer therapy. The team is also collaborating with Google DeepMind to further explore AI's potential in biology.
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