In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at President Trump’s cognitive test, Nvidia’s collaborations in life sciences and drug development, Cobot’s hospital robots, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
President Donald Trump
Getty Images
President Trump told reporters Monday that he had aced a cognitive test, comparing himself favorably to two younger Democrats, both of whom are non-white women. “The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions,” he said.
Trump, 79, appeared to be referring to a 10-minute test known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, commonly used to detect mild cognitive decline and early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. These tests are not given routinely in the general public, but are typically administered to adults who may be experiencing memory problems or to those whose family members are concerned about them. Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which has a genetic component.
In his comments this week, Trump also said that he underwent an MRI, claiming that “it was perfect,” but did not identify the reason for it or whether it was related to the cognitive test. Brain MRIs can be used to support the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases and to track their progression, but Trump did not give details about the MRI and there are numerous other body parts that could be scanned and reasons that they’re done.
The White House did not respond to questions about the MRI or cognitive exam.
This isn’t the first time that Trump has bragged about acing a cognitive test. Back in 2020, Trump notably went on television to talk about how he remembered a group of five words – Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV – in the right order. The appearance spawned memes and swag emblazoned with the five words.
For decades, there has been discussion both within the White House medical team and the broader medical community about how presidents should be evaluated for office, cognitively as well as physically, former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman wrote in a New York Times op-ed last year. “While nearly all physical difficulties can be accommodated, cognitive impairments are a different issue,” Kuhlman wrote. “A president must be in top mental shape to evaluate a complex situation, form a plan, consider the alternatives and possible consequences to a decision, and then provide definitive directives in a timely manner.”
Nvidia Expands Its Healthcare Ambitions
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Getty Images
Tech giant Nvidia, which became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market cap today, announced a series of partnerships this week with healthcare companies to use AI for drug development and in the life sciences.
One major development: pharma giant Eli Lilly teamed up with Nvidia to build what the two are calling an “AI factory.” This supercomputer, built on more than 1,000 of Nvidia’s chips, will operate out of Lilly’s existing data center in Indianapolis. This machine will build new AI drug discovery models based on Lilly’s proprietary data and will also be tasked with automating manufacturing and optimizing clinical trials.
Other collaborations include ones with Alphabet subsidiary Verily, which will integrate Nvidia’s AI tech into its precision health platform Pre; with Johnson & Johnson, which will use Nvidia’s AI models to help train its surgical robots; and with Innovaccer, which is partnering with the tech giant to accelerate development of multimodal AI models for healthcare.
Nvidia is also increasing its work with academic partners to use AI to advance life sciences research, including with more open source research models. These include CodonFM, used to develop RNA medicines; La-Proteina, which generates 3D protein structures; and a trio of models used for medical imaging. It also expanded its collaboration with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to develop virtual cell models that can be used by the scientific community.
BIOTECH AND PHARMA
Novartis agreed to buy Avidity Biosciences for $12 billion to get its dystrophy drugs, now in late-stage trials. The deal is the second-largest biotech acquisition of the year, behind only J&J’s $14.6 billion purchase of central- nervous system drugmaker Intra-Cellular Therapies in January. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan justified the price on an investor call Monday, saying that if the firm had waited for data, the size of the deal could have been “potentially twice as big.”
Also: London-based GHO Capital raised $2.9 billion for a new healthcare fund focused on biopharma, medtech, life sciences tools and other areas of healthcare. The new capital brings GHO’s assets to some $10.5 billion, which it says makes it Europe’s largest healthcare-focused private equity firm.
Plus: BridgeBio reported success in a second late-stage study for its therapy for a rare endocrine disorder and the FDA approved expanding the label for Merck’s potential blockbuster Winrevair to include its ability to reduce patients’ risk of hospitalization and death from pulmonary arterial hypertension.
DIGITAL HEALTH AND AI
AI pharma company Recursion received its second milestone payment of $30 million from partners Roche and Genentech for developing a whole-genome map of microglial immune cells. These are resident in the central nervous system, and the hope is that this information will provide new potential drug targets for a wide range of neurological disorders. The payment is part of a deal, worth up to $12 billion, that Recursion struck with the two drug companies in 2021.
Plus: Curve Biosciences, which is building a digital “atlas” of the human body based on its collection of tissues from multiple organs and disease states, raised $40 million in funding led by life sciences investor Luma Group to commercialize its software to enable diagnosis and monitoring of chronic diseases. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company was valued at $35 million last year, according to PitchBook; it declined to disclose its current valuation.
MEDTECH
Brad Porter, who helped Amazon deploy an army of more than 500,000 warehouse robots, founded Collaborative Robots, or Cobot, three and half years ago to push more robots out into the world. One early customer (and investor): Mayo Clinic. Moving stuff at hospitals is an ordeal that takes lots of time and manpower, and the fast-paced environment of a hospital can lead to clogged hallways and delayed surgeries. “There’s a lot of material movement in hospitals and it’s done 24/7, and hospitals struggle to find enough staffing to do all of it,” Porter told Forbes.
To start, he said, Cobot’s robots can move linen carts and food carts, and get surgical tools to the sterilization room and back. The Santa Clara, California-based company, which has raised $140 million from investors that include Sequoia, Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, as well as Mayo Clinic, doesn’t just focus on hospitals. It has also worked with shipping giant Maersk, vaccine maker Moderna and healthcare logistics firm Owens & Minor.
This is the unsexy side of robots, but the potential impact on hospitals, where profit margins are tight, could be game changing. “If you are a surgeon and you know you have a back-to-back schedule all day, and the surgical tools don’t make it from sterilization in time, your procedure is set back 15 minutes. On a human level, that causes a little anxiety and adrenaline,” Porter said. “If we can make it very smooth, then everything gets done very efficiently. That’s one of the lessons that we learned at Amazon.”
Plus: Surgeons removed a genetically modified pig kidney from a patient nine months transplant. That’s the longest time such a kidney has lasted in a human patient. (Forbes spoke with the CEO of biotech startup eGenesis, which provided the kidney, last year about its technology and plans.)
PUBLIC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which helps determine vaccine policy, was hit by widespread layoffs at the agency, according to The Guardian. The working groups that analyze data and help draw up ACIP’s agendas have reportedly not met for months, and a scheduled October meeting has been indefinitely postponed due to the government shutdown. If the federal government does not make key vaccine recommendations for children next year, families may not be reimbursed by insurance companies or qualify for social programs.
Plus: Texas sues Tylenol maker Kenvue alleging it deceived mothers about the risks associated with autism. The suit follows official warnings by President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that acetaminophen is a potential cause for autism. Scientific research to date does not suggest a causal link.
WHAT WE’RE READING
UnitedHealthcare may lose two-thirds of Obamacare enrollees after double-digit price hikes caused by Congress failing to extend premium subsidies. These subsidies are at the heart of the dispute over the current government shutdown.
More than one-third of Eli Lilly’s new prescriptions for its weight-loss drug Zepbound are coming from its direct-to-consumer program, LillyDirect.
Diptheria, a deadly disease for children, is resurgent in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Chad.
HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. is directing the CDC to investigate health harms of offshore wind farms, despite no indication any exist.
AI models are able to diagnose certain kinds of brain cancers faster and more cheaply than current molecular testing, according to a new study.
Tom Golisano, the billionaire founder of Paychex, pledged to give $253 million to six children’s hospitals around the country and form an alliance among them.
Citing Donald Trump’s executive order on the “biological reality of sex,” the Veteran’s Administration will make it more difficult for male veterans to obtain coverage for breast cancer treatments, despite the fact that this cancer is typically more deadly for men than women.
The FDA issued new draft guidance today proposing updates to the regulatory process for biosimilar drugs, aiming to accelerate their approval in order to reduce drug costs for patients.
MORE FROM FORBES
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/10/29/what-to-know-about-president-trumps-cognitive-test/
