1. Fortnite Expands With Videogame Offerings That Should Add a New Dimension to the Company
During December, Fortnite launched three new game modes—Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival—diversifying beyond its popular Battle Royale genre to broaden the appeal of its platform. Early data from videogame streaming service Twitch indicate that, in December, Fortnite’s watch time eclipsed 100 million hours,[i] a milestone rarely hit since COVID locked the global economy down in 2020 and 2021. After just one week, Lego Fortnite hit 2.4 million concurrent users.[ii] Today, were LEGO Fortnite available on gaming platform/gaming data source Steam, that December performance would place LEGO Fortnite in second place on Steam’s Most Played Games[iii] list—commanding the spot just below PUBG: Battlegrounds’ 3.2 million users and just above Counter-Strike’s 1.8 million users.
On Twitch, Fortnite is the fifth[iv] most popular game, a rank we believe is likely to climb during the next few years. With new modes of first-party games and more creators building third-party games, Fortnite seems poised to become an evolving platform that will extend its reach well beyond its significant Battle Royale success.
2. Targeted Protein Degraders Could Expand the Number of Diseases That Drugs Can Target
Kymera Therapeutics recently published[v] results from its Phase I trial, conducted in collaboration with Sanofi,[vi] testing a targeted protein degrader[vii] (TPD) that addresses an important immunoregulatory gene called IRAK4, in this case for the treatment of atopic dermatitis and hidradenitis suppurativa.
TPDs work differently from typical small molecule drugs. Instead of blocking or modifying the activity of a protein in patient cells, they tag harmful proteins in the body for destruction—a novel therapy that pushes the targeted protein toward a cell's proteasome, also known as its natural “garbage disposal” system, to break down and eliminate the disease-causing protein.
While researchers have found IRAK4 difficult to drug with conventional small molecules, Kymera’s TPD almost completely degraded the IRAK4 protein in the patients’ epidermal cells, which could be terrific news for the ~220 million patients suffering from atopic dermatitis globally, ~40 million of whom are younger than 4 years.[viii] Importantly, IRAK4 also may play a significant role in hematologic malignancies like acute myelogenous leukemia.
While the FDA has yet to approve a TPD, the modality is easier than small molecules to design and, in many cases, could represent a more efficacious therapy. Kymera’s data is adding to several recent examples demonstrating the potential for TPDs to expand the druggable proteome and improve human health.[ix]
3. Robots Are Approaching Their ChatGPT Moment
Last year, researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, and META debuted ALOHA,[x] a low-cost, open-source hardware system built for teleoperation. Trained by humans on minimal data and priced at $20,000, ALOHA excels at precise tasks like threading zip ties and inserting batteries into small devices, as shown below.
ARK’s research suggests that robotics and AI are converging—as ALOHA and Tesla's Optimus are demonstrating—moving toward a defining "aha moment" during the next few years.
Source: Zhao et al. 2023[xi]. For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security.
[i] TwitchTracker. 2023a. “Games: Fortnite.”
[ii] MMOs. 2023. “Lego Fortnite Set and All-Time Peak of Over 2.4 Millions Players Last Saturday.”
[iii] SteamBD. 2023. “Steam Charts.”
[iv] TwitchTracker. 2023b. “Most Popular Games.”
[v] Ackerman, L. et al. 2023. “IRAK4 degrader in hidradenitis suppurativa and atopic dermatitis: a phase 1 trial.” Nature Medicine.
[vi] Sanofi. 2023. “Partner Spotlight: Kymera and Sanofi chase “undruggable” targets in immunology.”
[vii] Békés, M. 2022. “PROTAC targeted protein degraders: the past is prologue.” Nat Rev Drug Discov
[viii] Kim, B.S. 2023. “Atopic Dermatitis.” Medscape.
[ix] Chirnomas, D. et al. “Protein degraders enter the clinic—a new approach to cancer therapy.” Nat Rev Clin Oncol.
[x] Zhao, T. et al. 2023. “Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware.” xArchiv.
[xi] Ibid.