Ginkgo Bioworks’ Datapoints unit unveiled the Virtual Cell Pharmacology Initiative (VCPI), an open-source effort to build a standardized pharmacology dataset and reference engineered cell line (V-Ref293) to accelerate virtual cell models for drug discovery. Ginkgo said VCPI will let contributors access high-throughput RNA profiling and aims to test at least 100,000 compounds and generate more than 12 billion data points. Ginkgo framed VCPI as addressing two core barriers: lack of a defined reference cell and the need for scalable, high-quality wet-lab pharmacology measurements. John Androsavich, GM of Ginkgo Datapoints, emphasized community-driven standardization and free early participation in data generation to improve model training and reproducibility.