vidia has teamed up with UK startup Basecamp Research, a frontier AI lab in life sciences, to announce "programmable gene insertion," a new form of therapy that could reprogram cells and replace genes to treat incurable diseases.

Basecamp Research claims that its breakthrough has achieved one of the key goals of genetic medicine over the past several decades: replacing DNA sequences at precise locations in a person's genome. Comparatively, therapies based on the popular CRISPR technology make small edits that damage DNA, which limits their use.

• Basecamp Research's AI-Programmable Gene Insertion (aiPGI) uses Nvidia's EDEN AI models that are focused on DNA and biology. 
• Nvidia, Microsoft, and a group of academics published a paper with lab results showing how the EDEN AI models successfully achieved insertion in "disease-relevant target sites in the human genome."
• Meanwhile, Basecamp Research demonstrated insertion in over 10,000 "disease-related locations in the human genome," which included effectiveness at killing cancer cells
• Using the same models, AI-designed molecules have also proved effective at targeting drug-resistant "superbugs."

John Finn, Chief Scientific Officer at Basecamp Research, said, "We believe we are at the start of a major expansion of what's possible for patients with cancer and genetic disease. By using AI to design the therapeutic enzyme, we hope to accelerate the development of cures for thousands of untreatable diseases."

NVentures (NVIDIA's venture capital arm) also announced an investment in Basecamp Research's pre-Series C funding round to accelerate the development of these new genetic therapies.