The fruit fly cancer researcher who built his first prototype out of lollipop sticks and straws

By the time most of us notice fruit flies, something’s rotting. Or perhaps those fruit flies are crowding a fermenting sourdough starter, or swarming a banana that’s about to become an unwanted mush pile. But, for biomedical scientist Caíque Costa, fruit flies aren’t meant to be swatted—when studied, they’re where cancer breakthroughs may begin. “When people think of a scientist, they don’t think about a fruit fly,” Costa said. “The same ones bothering your Sunday barbecue, or the bananas right in your kitchen.” Two things can be true—that household nuisance is simultaneously a powerful model for studying cancer. As I’ve covered the intersection of AI and scientific research—including a magazine feature on Demis Hassabis’s Isomorphic Labs—I’ve heard a lot about the efficiencies AI can bring to the scientific process. But I’ve also wondered about what AI can’t fix, because so much friction in science is grueling, physical, and terribly mundane. (The lab equipment sector alone is also worth up to $45 billion.) That’s why I was interested in Costa’s company FlyFast, which he started in 2024 and filed a non-provisional patent for this year. It’s very early days for the small business, which derives from Costa’s work studying cancer genetics through fruit flies. “They have a lot of genetic resemblance to humans,” explains Costa, who did his undergrad at Brazil’s Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health and got his Ph.D. from Tulane in 2025. Humans and fruit flies share about 60% of genes, but when it comes to human disease-associated genes, those numbers are even higher—closer to 85% overlap. “Flies are a very fast model for retaining results and making breakthrough discoveries,” Costa told Fortune. “They’re also cheap to maintain and relatively simple to work with.” Flies are mostly straightforward to work with, Costa points out, save for one thing: Feeding them is almost farcically labor intensive. Here’s how it goes: