In AI drug discovery, the model was never the moat

The COVID vaccines were the loud announcement. The interesting part is what followed: a quiet, unglamorous industrialization of mRNA as a substrate.

Once you can reliably design, synthesize, and deliver a defined message to a cell, a lot of problems collapse into the same shape. Cancer vaccines, protein replacement therapies, in vivo cell engineering, even certain agricultural applications — they all become variations of 'ship this instruction, get this protein, for this long.'

The hard problems are no longer really about the RNA itself. They're about delivery, tissue targeting, tolerability at repeat dose, and cost of goods at the scale of chronic disease. Those are engineering problems, and engineering problems tend to yield.