Blank Bio Announces Seed Financing and Strategic Collaboration with PacBio to Advance RNA Foundation Models for Precision Oncology

Blank Bio, an applied AI research lab training foundation models for RNA, today announced the closing of a $7.2 million seed financing and a strategic collaboration with Pacific Biosciences (Nasdaq: PACB), a leading developer of high-quality, highly accurate sequencing solutions. Blank Bio is building RNA foundation models that learn directly from the molecular complexity of tumor transcriptomes to improve patient-level prediction across oncology. Proceeds from the financing will support continued model development, expanded collaborations with pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies, and new long-read RNA-seq datasets to support applications in biomarkers, clinical trial design, and diagnostics.

“Bulk RNA-seq is one of the most clinically accessible and information-rich assays in oncology, but much of its signal is still reduced to simplified gene-level summaries,” said Jonathan Hsu, CEO and Co-Founder of Blank Bio. “Blank Bio was founded to apply foundation models to the full molecular detail contained in each patient’s tumor transcriptome and turn that information into more precise, clinically useful predictions. This financing will support continued model development and partnership expansion, while our collaboration with PacBio will generate the high-resolution long-read RNA data needed to further train and evaluate these models in patient tumor samples.”

Advancing RNA foundation models with high-resolution long-read data

For its strategic collaboration with PacBio, Blank Bio will generate PacBio HiFi long-read, bulk RNA sequencing data from up to 100 fresh frozen patient tumor samples spanning multiple cancer indications. Sequencing will be done at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, where the Kinnex RNA libraries are automated on the SPTLabtech firefly+ platform. Blank Bio will use the data to further train and evaluate its models, focusing on oncology applications where incorporating RNA-level signals may improve patient stratification, biomarker discovery, and clinical interpretation.

“PacBio HiFi long-read sequencing was built to resolve biology that other technologies miss, and nowhere is that more consequential than in the complex transcriptomes of patient tumors,” said David Miller, Global Vice President of Marketing at PacBio. “Blank Bio’s foundation models demonstrate how high-resolution RNA data and machine learning can advance the next generation of precision oncology applications, from biomarkers and diagnostics to clinical trial design.”

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