Therna Biosciences Releases Chronos, the Data Engine Behind its AI RNA Biologist

Therna's novel proprietary method generates millions of functional RNA measurements within a dynamic biological system, producing unique data sets from single experiments. A representative data set is now available to researchers and prospective partners.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Therna Biosciences, a biotechnology company whose AI RNA Biologist, RNA-Logix™, translates RNA language into medicines, today announced the launch of Chronos and the public release of one representative Chronos study set. Chronos is the novel data engine of RNA-Logix™, generating orders of magnitude more functional RNA data than the industry standard in a single experiment, representing the complexity of a whole biological system.

Chronos is a highly multiplexed measurement of expression dynamics for tens of thousands of synthetic genes and mRNAs across dozens of diverse human cell lines, resulting in millions of functional RNA measurements in every single experiment. Researchers and prospective partners can use the released study sets to train and benchmark sequence-to-function models, test how the same RNA sequence behaves across different cellular contexts and over time, and evaluate design rules for expression, stability, and cell-type-specific behavior.

"All biological models, including RNA design models, are defined by the quality and scale of the biological data behind their design and whether it represents the complexity of the biological system," said Nazli Azimi, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Therna. "Therna is built on the belief that RNA is a language, and that a company able to understand it can write medicines in it. RNA-Logix™ is Therna's AI RNA Biologist, unlocking new biology and designing the novel medicines that act on it. All of that begins with data. Chronos fundamentally changed how we generate that data at a scale and the complexity that interrogates RNA dynamics within a living system. We are releasing one data set to show the field what becomes reachable when scale and dynamic measurements are taken into account."

Conventional methods measure one mRNA, in one cell type, at one moment. Chronos measures tens of thousands of synthetic mRNAs across a pool of 50 human cell lines and follows them over time, all within a single experiment, at a scale that would otherwise take months of separate experiments to assemble. Analyzing millions of single cells requires a matching computational approach. Therna achieved an approximately 200x speedup using rapids-single cell, an open-source scverse package built on NVIDIA CUDA-X for Data Science.

"For years we could ask what one RNA does in one cell type and get a clean answer to a narrow question. Chronos lets us ask what thousands of sequences do across 50 cellular contexts at once, and the answer is not the same in every cell," said Hani Goodarzi, Ph.D., Scientific Co-Founder of Therna, Core Investigator at the Arc Institute, and faculty at the University of California, San Francisco. "That variation is the point. It tells us how a sequence and the cell reading it combine to set behavior, which is what a model of the cell needs to learn and has not had. It also turns that biology into design: which part of an RNA to target to drive a therapeutic response, and what to put into an mRNA so it works hardest in the cell type we are aiming at."

Therna is releasing the Chronos data set conducted on 50 human cell lines (courtesy of Tahoe Therapeutics). The release comprises one study set generated on Chronos: Penta-47x27K and Tria-47x28K which are available on Hugging Face, along with a technical white paper covering the data set, quality control, and preliminary sequence-to-function modeling. In collaboration with Lightning AI, Therna is also releasing a Lightning Studio so users can interact with the data directly. The release does not include experimental protocols or Therna's RNA foundation models. A separate Chronos study set generated in human immune cells remains proprietary, supporting the Company's internal programs and partnered work.

Therna is making these study sets available so prospective partners and the broader community can see the scale and complexity of the data that RNA-Logix™ is built and trained on. The Company invites researchers to train on the study sets, benchmark against them, and publish their findings, and welcomes contact from organizations that see an application to their own biology.

Organizations interested in applying Therna's proprietary human immune cell Chronos study set to their own biology are invited to contact Therna about collaboration.

About Therna Biosciences

Therna is a biotechnology company translating RNA language into medicines. Its platform, RNA-Logix™, is an AI RNA Biologist that unlocks new biology and designs the novel medicines that act on it. Because RNA-Logix™ treats mRNA both as a medicine and as a target, Therna designs across modalities on one platform, engineering mRNA optimized for translation, stability, immune evasion, and tissue-specific expression, and identifying optimal target sites within mRNA for ASO and siRNA design. Therna's technology can increase, decrease, or finely tune gene expression, enabling applications across cardiovascular, metabolic, immunological, and genetic diseases, in addition to ultra-rare, individualized treatments. Headquartered in San Francisco, Therna is backed by leading investors and scientific advisors at the forefront of RNA and AI innovation. Please visit therna.com for more information.

SOURCE Therna Biosciences