{"id":662,"date":"2026-02-09T16:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sentinelbio.org\/?p=662"},"modified":"2026-02-09T19:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:16:07","slug":"sentinel-2025-annual-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sentinelbio.org\/sentinel-2025-annual-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentinel 2025 Annual Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After Covid-19, I committed my life to making pandemics history. <\/strong>In my role at the UN Special Envoy’s office on community health across Africa, I had already been deeply primed for the horrific violence of infectious diseases during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. But the Covid pandemic laid bare humanity\u2019s incapacity for outbreak response at a global scale and the profound loss of control that ensued. This experience \u2014 as I battled to scale global vaccine manufacturing at Novavax, always one step behind the virus \u2014 drove my pivot from global health to biosecurity, to prevent pandemics before they begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe in technology’s power to help us end pandemics<\/strong>. Still, since founding Sentinel two years ago, I\u2019ve confronted the increasingly powerful convergence of AI and synthetic biology with vigilance. Despite firmly believing in technology\u2019s role in making pandemics history, the current trajectory of AI triggers the same loss-of-control feeling as Covid-19. What happens when AI agents \u2014 easy entry points for non-experts \u2014 integrate with sophisticated biodesign tools? Will the democratization of biology enable bioterrorists to engineer pathogens with enhanced transmissibility, virulence, or immune evasion, long before we have the defenses to take pandemics off the table?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These questions keep me up at night \u2014 and also galvanize me to action, seeking to address deficits in capital and engagement.<\/strong> We\u2019re one of just two philanthropic organizations deploying at least $10M per year in the biotech governance space \u2014 a pittance compared to the estimated <\/a>$9-15B in climate philanthropy in 2024 alone.  The consequence of this funding gap is that fewer than 100 people worldwide work full-time on directly tackling the challenge of preventing advanced biotechnology misuse.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know biotech governance is tractable: <\/strong>our partners are making AI models safer and implementing biosecurity screening for synthetic nucleic acids. In just two years, efforts from the biosecurity community and synthesis industry have increased screening among gene synthesis providers by 180%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The window to get ahead of these risks is narrow; perhaps a matter of years, not decades. <\/strong>The pace of technological advancement isn’t slowing down \u2014 we\u2019re looking ahead at the development of an interconnected tech stack of AI agents, biological tools, and outsourced manufacturing that will dramatically lower barriers to entry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hope we can scale the required work fast enough to meet the moment \u2014 we need to at least double the people working on this issue and rapidly grow the funding available. We are confident that we can responsibly deploy $75M+ over the next three to five years toward biotech governance to prevent misuse until the defenses come online and pandemic-proof the world. Through this work, we can accelerate the critical work of biotech governance, expand screening infrastructure, and build the safeguards that will prevent catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re deeply grateful to everyone who shares our commitment to making pandemics history and to the partners in governments, non-profits, and companies around the world whose dedication makes this work possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Impact to date<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As I reflect on Sentinel’s first two years, it’s encouraging to see the hard work of our partners and the real momentum building across the biosecurity field. We set ourselves a clear win condition: in our lifetime, no malicious or reckless actor uses advanced biotechnologies to create and release pandemic pathogens. We’re constantly sharpening our theory of victory to get there. Our initial focus areas \u2014 AI-enabled biosecurity risks and nucleic acid synthesis screening \u2014 are gaining traction thanks to the work of researchers, advocates, and policymakers worldwide. Governments are creating policies; companies are adopting safeguards; the work of our partners is paying off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safeguarding biological AI models<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In our AI-biosecurity program, we\u2019ve invested heavily in mapping the landscape to distinguish between imminent and long-term challenges and prioritize accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SecureBio\u2019s Virology Capabilities Test,<\/a> which Sentinel funded, shows how frontier LLMs can now outperform expert virologists, underscoring the growing risks of democratizing biotechnology. This evidence prompted companies to add safeguards to their most powerful models. For narrower biological design tools, we commissioned Epoch to document <\/a>that only 3% of over 300 models had any safeguards as of early 2025. Our partnership<\/a> with CLTR and RAND revealed that 61.5% of the highest-risk frontier models are open source, with code, weights, and training data publicly available. This is concerning because open-source models with publicly available weights and data can be accessed and modified by malicious actors to bypass safeguards designed to prevent misuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, we also moved beyond assessing risks in the digital realm to understanding how AI lowers barriers in the real world. Early this year, we funded<\/a> the largest randomized controlled trial of AI uplift, testing whether LLMs can meaningfully assist novices in executing complex laboratory protocols. This study generated crucial evidence on whether \u2014 and under what conditions \u2014 AI models could soon expand the pool of actors capable of developing pandemic pathogens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, we’ll expand beyond assessing AI-Bio risk to pressure-testing the feasibility of model-based mitigations for biological tools. We’ve already begun pilot efforts, such as our partnership <\/a>with CEPI to explore managed-access protocols for their vaccine design models. While similar methods have proven effective on language models like ChatGPT (preventing them from assisting would-be bioterrorists), they haven’t yet been sufficiently tested on specialized biological design models that could enable the design of pandemic pathogens. And critically, we must assess how much safeguarding some models matters when bad actors may be able to use unsafeguarded alternatives instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we test the feasibility of model-based safeguards, we\u2019ll need governments to create the conditions for their widespread adoption. Work in this field has led to initial progress \u2014 with briefings from our partners resulting in concrete policy outcomes in both the UK and the EU \u2014 and I expect a sustained effort to cement these mitigations on the global policy agenda. This will be a tough battle, but one that I see no choice but to embark on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preventing bad actors from buying hazardous DNA online<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In our DNA security work, we\u2019re focusing relentlessly on improving two key indicators of progress towards our victory condition: the prevalence<\/em> and quality<\/em> of biosecurity screening conducted by DNA providers worldwide. Our ambitious goal is to have at least 80% of companies conduct high-quality screening to prevent the misuse of synthetic DNA by 2030; our threat modelling suggests that we need to reach this threshold to create substantial to illicit acquisition of concerning sequences. Thanks to our partners, we have made significant progress: a 180% increase in gene synthesis screening over the past two years that gives me tremendous hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This progress has largely been driven by a shifting policy landscape. In the U.S., which accounts for 25% of all gene synthesis companies globally, two consecutive presidential administrations have catalyzed increased adoption by emphasizing DNA security in executive orders<\/a>, the AI Action Plan<\/a>, and official R&D budget priorities<\/a>.  Efforts from civil society played a key role in making this issue an executive priority \u2014 including the Nuclear Threat Initiative\u2019s<\/a> work to establish interventions to reduce global biological risks, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security\u2019s<\/a> work on U.S. biosecurity policy, and red-teaming efforts by groups like the Engineering Biology Research Consortium<\/a> and SecureDNA.<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we need to go further. Executive action needs to be complemented by legislation<\/a> to ensure enforceable screening across the private sector. Fortunately, there is now a broad coalition of stakeholders \u2014 including the DNA synthesis industry<\/a>, frontier AI companies<\/a>, and the leading America-first think tank<\/a> \u2014 whose advocacy we\u2019re confident will translate to legislative action in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last December marked a major policy milestone for the field, as the EU Commission unveiled<\/a> a proposal for the flagship EU Biotech Act: mandatory DNA screening across Europe, representing 11% of gene synthesis companies. This is an extremely ambitious policy with teeth, including articles on enforcement, auditing, and penalties for non-compliance, which aggressively pushes towards our win condition. If Parliament and Council pass this proposal in 2026, this would represent one of the biggest policy wins for biotech governance in a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re proud of this progress, driven by mission-driven efforts inside and outside of government worldwide. We see ourselves as \u201chumanity\u2019s directly responsible individuals\u201d for the orphan issue of DNA security. Sentinel provided more than 70% of the philanthropic funding to this field in 2025, and we\u2019re partnering with most, if not all, of the two dozen people in the world who work full-time on this problem. We are confident we wouldn\u2019t have made this progress without our small but mighty coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2025 Learnings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pressure-testing our own strategy<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A critical ingredient in Sentinel\u2019s impact is being relentlessly truth-seeking, transparent, and nimble. We prioritize doing critical in-house research to honestly assess and update our strategy \u2014 to be productively paranoid about avoiding path-dependencies. Sentinel doesn\u2019t exist to make grants to \u2018the field\u2019; we\u2019re here to solve the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Q3-4, we did a research sprint to answer: <\/p>\n\n\n\n