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Rebuild Biotech for the AI Era | Benchling

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Curing disease is a noble cause, but the odds are stacked against us. My perspective on biotech is a little unusual: I’m not a scientist, though I briefly worked in a biology lab. I’m a software engineer who has spent more than a decade immersed in the biopharma industry, building tools for the scientists who drive it forward. The frustrations I hear haven’t changed. Making a new medicine is too slow, too costly, and too uncertain. This essay distills what I’ve learned about where the system is broken and why, with AI as a catalyst, we have a once-in-a-generation chance to fix it. Fifty years ago, scientists discovered they could cut and paste DNA, quietly igniting modern biotechnology. Within a decade, synthetic insulin became the first genetically engineered medicine to reach patients. Breakthroughs have followed in waves, with the last decade marked by the rise of biologics and new therapeutic modalities: CAR-Ts that reprogram the immune system, mRNA vaccines taken by over a billion

Rebuild Biotech for the AI Era | Benchling Skip to Main Content Login English Blog Posted on September 8, 2025 Rebuild biotech for the AI era Sajith Wickramasekara Co-Founder & CEO Curing disease is a noble cause, but the odds are stacked against us. My perspective on biotech is a little unusual: I’m not a scientist, though I briefly worked in a biology lab. I’m a software engineer who has spent more than a decade immersed in the biopharma industry, building tools for the scientists who drive it forward. The frustrations I hear haven’t changed. Making a new medicine is too slow, too costly, an

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