Founder-led Bio on Tour
Boston
Boston, MA
Join Pillar VC and co-hosts for the Boston stop of the Founder-led Bio Tour. This event is a curated evening of networking with founders, PhD students and leaders of the founder-led biotech movement.
Boston Co-hosts
Alec
Neilsen
Josie
Kishi
Jake
Becraft
Stan
Wang
Dan
Mandell
Mariana
Matus
Matthias
Wagner
Luciano
Bueno
Gleb
Kuznetsov
JM
Geremia
Bill
Brady
Chris
Tolles
Alina
Su
Erik
Aznauryan
Liz
O'Day
Dan
Goodwin
Mimoun Cadosch Delmar
Soufiane
Aboulhouda
Liane
Clamen
Clinton
Hansen
Ashton Trotman-Grant
Christoph
Muus
Reshma
Shetty
Tim
Wannier
Sherif
Gerges
Acurasset Therapeutics
Jared
Kehe
Nova
Pishesha
Oliver
Dodd
ShiYin
Foo
Floris Engelhardt
Eric
Kelsic
Adil
Yusuf
Virtual Events
Virtual events are open registration. You’ll need to register for each event separately.
DAY 1
Virtual speed networking
Rapid 2-minute chats with other attendees, fostering quick yet impactful connections from wherever you are. Register
DAY 2
Virtual co-founder match
Dive into curated conversations on the Hopin platform. Discover your next startup collaborator. Register
DAY 3
Virtual speed networking
Rapid 2-minute chats with other attendees, fostering quick yet impactful connections from wherever you are. Register
Want to get involved?
If you have a concept for a virtual event that aligns with our mission, we want to hear from you! Whether it’s a workshop, panel discussion, or a unique interactive session, share your vision with us, and let’s bring it to life together.
Email madelyn@pillar.vc
Boston Co-hosts
We believe deeply in the need to break our dependency on petroleum and animal products. That’s why we’re building a next-gen microbial platform, to make everything from plastics to proteins. We use cutting-edge technology to develop new microbial chasses, making scaling sustainable products faster and cheaper than ever.
Tim
Wannier
Josie
Kishi
Jake
Becraft
Jen
Nwankwo
Luciano
Bueno
Liz
O'Day
Alec
Nielsen
Asimov builds tools to program living cells. By integrating mammalian synthetic biology, computer-aided design, and machine learning, our multi-disciplinary team is advancing the design and manufacture of biologics and gene therapies.
Stan
Wang
Thymmune Therapeutics is developing a machine learning-driven thymic cell engineering platform to restore normal immune function in aging and disease. The company’s
cutting-edge approach in iPSC-thymic cell manufacturing can generate off-the-shelf cells at scale to treat immune deficiencies, transplant-related, and autoimmune disorders.
Jared
Kehe
Concerto Biosciences examines the microbial world with unmatched experimental depth to discover breakthrough microbe-based products. We draw inspiration from microbial ecology: Microbes all around us work in concert to improve human health, enhance food quality, and boost crop yield.
Dan
Mandell
Nabiha
Saklayen
Floris Engelhardt
Kano Therapeutics is a biotech startup innovating DNA payloads for genomic medicines using non-viral targeted DNA insertions. Using circular single-stranded DNA repair templates, Kano has achieves 4-8X more healthy, edited cells compared to using standard double-stranded DNA. Over the next two years, the company aims to build a robust pre-clinical pipeline portfolio to develop and collaborate on non-viral cell and gene therapies.
Gleb
Kuznetsov
Manifold Bio is a therapeutics company with a proprietary in vivo multiplexing platform which enables the evaluation of hundreds of antibody designs simultaneously in a single animal experiment. This massive expansion of in vivo data generation powers the company’s AI-guided protein design approach and gives Manifold an unprecedented advantage building its pipeline of tissue-specific medicines. Using this platform, Manifold has progressed to the forefront of solving brain delivery with a rapidly expanding portfolio of blood-brain barrier (BBB)-penetrating shuttles with differentiated properties. The company is pursuing major neurodegenerative indications where a versatile platform that can solve brain exposure is key to unlocking therapeutic benefit for millions of patients.
Bill
Brady
Kula Bio is a leader in sustainable nitrogen solutions, helping farmers improve crop yield and reduce environmental impact. We make a cost-competitive biofertilizer that boosts a naturally occurring process to deposit meaningful amounts of nitrogen in the soil.
Chris
Tolles
Yard Stick measures soil carbon. Scientists and farmers alike know that climate-friendly agricultural practices have the potential to remove atmospheric CO2 at gigaton/year scale. When these practices are adopted, more carbon is stored in soils, improving soil health and fighting climate change. But significant measurement challenges have held soil carbon efforts back – until now.
Cheri
Ackerman
Concerto Biosciences creates breakthrough products based on our unmatched understanding of microbial ecology. Targeting the microbiome has been hailed as a promising strategy to safely and sustainably improve human health and consumer experience.
Dan
Goodwin
Homeworld Collective is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit igniting the growth of climate biotechnology. Hinged on the values of community building, knowledge creation, and converting ideas into action through accessible funding, Homeworld Collective is the go-to source for talented scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and funders committed to maximizing the impact of climate biotechnology for planetary health.
Mimoun Cadosch Delmar
Matterworks is using the power of AI to fundamentally change the impact of biological measurements and observations.
Liane
Clamen
Adaptilens is the only IOL that imitates the human eye’s natural lens. We are a team of ophthalmologists, cataract specialists, scientists, and engineers with a singular focus on improving the vision and quality of life of cataract patients. We are developing an accommodating IOL with novel polymers to give patients the ability to focus not just on a single distance but on objects near, far, and in between–without the help of glasses or contact lenses.
Christoph
Muus
ShiYin
Foo
Our mission is to translate novel and unique insights regarding the intersection of cardiac biology and the immune system.
We are developing new therapies that address core problems in abnormal heart rhythms.
Jack
Geremia
Matterworks is using the power of AI to fundamentally change the impact of biological measurements and observations.
Ashley
Abel
Reshma
Shetty
At Ginkgo, we use biology to grow the future. Companies across industries leverage our platform to design, develop, and optimize products for a breadth of commercial applications. We help our partners grow key ingredients for vaccines, crops that rely less on fossil fuel-based fertilizers, plant-based meat that tastes like the real thing, materials for the next generation of circular fashion, and so much more.
Aaron
Edwards
KiraGen Bio engineers multiplex-edited cell therapies that defeat solid tumors like glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) by overcoming the suppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Its proprietary AI-driven platform, KiraLOGIC, uniquely selects optimized gene editing combinations that empower CAR-T cells to resist these suppressive signals, significantly enhancing their durability and efficacy.
Kasia
Kready
Andee
Wallace
On a mission to help growers achieve more sustainable and productive agricultural systems, Robigo’s platform of microbial strains, genetic tools, and bioactive payloads deliver targeted biological solutions that improve crop health and yield.
Grace
Tiao
At E9 Genomics, we’re building a scalable search engine that can harmonize and index all biological data — both structured and unstructured, up to the petabyte scale — to enable every scientist to make rapid, data-driven decisions about mission-critical questions, whether they’re building the next blockbuster drug or designing novel microbes to improve agricultural yields.
Parastoo
Khoshakhlagh
GC Therapeutics Inc. (GCTx) uses synthetic biology to program patient-derived stem cells into any cell type with best-in-class efficiency (up to 10X), speed (up to 100X) and scalability. We dictate cells fates in a single step and have validated cells for many applications. We have also developed SuperCells™ by tailoring cells for specific diseases. The core technology of GCTx was conceived, invented and perfected in Professor George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School.
Luciano
Santollani
Prox Biosciences is an early-stage biotechnology company developing targeted biologics.
Josh
Peters
Prox Biosciences is an early-stage biotechnology company developing targeted biologics.
Shardule
Shah
Lime Therapeutics is unlocking a new class of precision lipid-targeting medicines to defeat cancer. Our first-of-its-kind real-time lipid-detection platform, LipidSense, identified a novel target in liver cancer, and we are in the initial stages of a drug development program. In addition, we have pipeline programs in lung cancer. Besides fueling internal drug development, LipidSense also unlocks multiple additional revenue opportunities with pharma partners.
Ankit
Gupta
At Ginkgo, we use biology to grow the future. Companies across industries leverage our platform to design, develop, and optimize products for a breadth of commercial applications. We help our partners grow key ingredients for vaccines, crops that rely less on fossil fuel-based fertilizers, plant-based meat that tastes like the real thing, materials for the next generation of circular fashion, and so much more.
Sponsor the 2024 Tour
The Founder-Led Bio Summit is a community-driven experience; we’d love to hear from you if you are interested in sponsoring. Please contact Madelyn Heart for more information at madelyn@pillar.vc.
