Exin Therapeutics lets an AI agent run a mouse brain injection

The San Francisco biotech wired an agent to a motorized surgical rig, with a veterinarian holding the kill switch An AI agent picked a gene therapy, worked out where to deliver it, and then helped carry out the injection into a living mouse’s brain. That is the experiment Exin Therapeutics founder Gabriel Ocana-Santero recently ran. Chatbots usually stop at drafting your emails. This one got its hands on lab hardware. The procedure needed some extra steps and a lot of human supervision. Still, it offers an early look at AI moving from a research assistant that suggests experiments to one that physically runs them. “We’ve realized that we need to connect these agents to a lab to get the maximum value from them,” Ocana-Santero says. How the experiment worked Exin is a San Francisco biotech startup and part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort. Ocana-Santero co-founded it with Marko Tvrdic, and the company focuses on AI-driven treatments for neurological conditions. The experiment took place on or around October 27-28, 2026. It started with a decision rather than a scalpel. The AI agent reviewed 19 candidate gene therapies and selected one designed to boost GABA. GABA is the brain’s m...