Second Order Conversations, Episode 01: Jeff Liu, CEO & Co-founder of FinalDose A tumor analysis can list the mutations a cancer carries. FinalDose is asking whether a mutation can do more than describe the disease. The company wants to use it as an address: a DNA sequence that a therapy reads, finds, and acts on. FinalDose was founded in 2025 by Jeff Liu, Ph.D. (CEO & Co-founder), Li-Yao Huang, Ph.D. (Chief Scientific Officer), Steven Lin, Ph.D. (Chief Technology Officer). All three are based in London. All three hold Oxford doctorates, in oncology, biochemistry, and computational biology, respectively. That mix of disciplines matters for what follows, because what they are building moves between molecular biology, computation, and the practical work of building a company. They are developing a CRISPR-based approach to identifying cancer cells by their genetic mutations and selectively destroying them. What Jeff believes is possible (I join him in his optimism)! In the heat of summer, I met with Jeff Liu, also known as “the dude @ FinalDose”. We had a chat and covered: * Why FinalDose is exploring genetic mutations rather than relying solely on protein targets in cancerous cells * The “search and destroy” concept: re-engineering CRISPR-Cas to identify a cancer-associated mutation and eliminate the cell carrying it * How programmable guide RNA could potentially enable different genetic targets * The delivery challenge: reaching the right cells and organs, and the risk of off-target effects and unwanted immune responses * How AI is used to narrow possibilities and accelerate lab work, which Jeff says has sped it up by roughly 90% * Building a biotech between London and the U.S. * Does China have the cure for cancer? * A few moments of laughs in between This is the first episode of Second Order Conversations, an interview series featuring biotech and life sciences founders, scientists, and thinkers discussing the challenges they face, the decisions they make, and the second-order effect of turning breakthrough technology into reality. We ask not just what it does, but also what changes when it meets the real world and where uncertainty remains. Watch the full conversation with Jeff Liu on YouTube. Subscribe to Second Order Conversations to follow the series. Thanks for reading Second Order Conversations! Subscribe for more. More about the team at FinalDose: Jeff Liu - CEO. Ph.D. in Oncology from Oxford. His previous startup, Vivid Dx, solved a multi-decade bottleneck in sepsis diagnostics by overcoming the challenge of low biomass isolation. Overcoming this hurdle enabled us to build the world’s fastest diagnostic system, slashing wait times from five days to just 30 minutes. He has a proven track record of closing institutional rounds, having secured $5m in seed funding and $10m in pre-series A funding. Li-Yao Huang – CSO: Oxford PhD in Biochemistry. He developed a comprehensive discovery-to-validation framework utilising Cas9 and its derivatives to identify and verify novel therapeutic targets from high-throughput genetic and genetic-drug interaction data. Scientific lead in molecular biology, cellular assays and construct engineering. Steven Lin – CTO. PhD in Computational Biology from Oxford. Previously Data Lead at Gutsee Biotech. He developed a novel machine learning method that uses coevolutionary biology to identify genetic targets that confer drug resistance in viruses. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, he led the UK Biobank’s analysis of human genetic susceptibility to infection. FinalDose This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit secondordernarrative.substack.com
