2024 Co-hosts
Co-hosts of the Founder-led Bio Tour are founders and leaders of successful biotech companies and champions of the founder-led biotech movement. Meet them at their local tour stop!
Seemay
Chou
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York City. We are a drug discovery company developing a new generation of therapeutics that embrace the complexity of disease. Currently available approaches for creating drugs work on the principal of finding one drug-one protein ‘magic bullets’. By designing multi-specific drugs, we are able to create therapeutics that are more efficacious and safer than existing medicines.
Kevin
Parker
Cartography Biosciences is building a differentiated oncology pipeline of antibody-based therapies designed to target tumors more precisely than existing therapeutics. Cartography’s ATLAS and SUMMIT drug discovery platforms are powered by an industry-leading, fully integrated dataset spanning over a thousand cell types across the healthy body and large-scale profiling of individuals cells from patient tumors.
Lex
Rovner
64x Bio is a series A-stage biotech company originating from Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute. Using novel high throughput genome engineering and screening technologies in a design loop with computational tools, 64x Bio is developing highly optimized cell lines, as well as other tools and technologies for the manufacturing of viral vectors.
Maricel
Saenz
Commodity coffee production is double trouble. It contributes to and suffers from the effects of climate change. So we got to work to protect our favorite ritual and our home planet. Minus produces coffee with less water, less carbon emissions, and shorter supply chains. It’s coffee minus the beans.
Josh
Moser
Plonts is a plant-based dairy company that utilizes traditional fermentation to create products that are delicious, nutritious, and cheaper than their animal-based alternatives.
David
Schaffer
QB3 is the University of California’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in life science. The institute supports UC researchers and empowers California founders to launch startup companies and partner with industry.
Brandon
Wilson
Range Bio is making proteomics clinically actionable by developing scalable and cost-effective platforms for high-throughput protein quantification. Their innovative technology enables precise and accessible solutions across healthcare, with a vision to revolutionize personalized medicine and early disease detection.
Alfredo
Andere
The goal of The Latch Project is to build and disseminate the data infrastructure of the biocomputing revolution
Johnny
Yu
Vevo therapeutics is building the world’s largest single cell atlases and leveraging them for drug development in Oncology. Vevo’s Mosaic platform enables data generation across many patients in a single in vivo system. Combined with AI, the platform enables discovery of novel scaffolds and patient subgroups for precision oncology programs.
John
Suliman
ShapeTX is pioneering the field of programmable RNA medicines to repair the genetic causes of diseases. By merging innovations in AI and RNA technology to generate and analyze hundreds of billions of therapeutic possibilities, ShapeTX is developing breakthroughs in RNA editing, next-generation AAVs, and disruptive gene therapy manufacturing.
Ashley
Zehnder
Fauna Bio is a biotechnology company using comparative genomics and data from “extreme mammals” capable of surviving conditions or physiological events that would be lethal to humans to identify drug targets to treat human disease. By comparing gene expression in animal species, Fauna Bio unlocks unique insights that drive innovative approaches to human disease prevention and treatment.
Lachlan
MacKinnon
Replay is a genome writing company, which aims to define the future of genomic medicine through reprogramming biology by writing and delivering big DNA. The Company has assembled a toolkit of disruptive platform technologies – including a high payload capacity HSV platform, a hypoimmunogenic platform, and a genome writing platform.
Armand
Cognetta
General Proximity is a biotech start-up pioneering the next generation of induced proximity medicines
Nathaniel
Chu
At Plonts, we use microbes to transform the most sustainable, inexpensive, and nutritious plants into delicious fermented foods.
Lada
Nuzhna
Epi Labs is developing multiplex epigenetic editors for age-related diseases.
Raphael
Townshend
Atomic AI is an AI-native drug discovery company harnessing cutting-edge foundation models trained with extensive proprietary RNA-centric data, to understand the physics, functions, and interactions of RNA.
Eeshit
Vaishnav
Sequome designs & decodes sequences for developing therapeutics with our partners, which include: Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical & Technology companies, in addition to leading biotech & life science companies.
Brandon
White
Eliminating chemical toxicity by replacing experiments with AI.
Nicholas Larus Stone
Sphinx Bio is a life science software startup building the next generation data platform for modern biotechs. Sphinx removes the repetitive, tedious tasks that waste hours of scientist time each week, while automagically building a robust data lakehouse for computational teams.
Nicolas
Tilmans
Discovering new medicines by combining ultra throughput biochemistry and machine learning.
Egan
Peltan
Stealth Startup
Michael
Becich
The path towards a cure begins with a sample. Cache DNA is revolutionizing the way molecular biospecimens like DNA/RNA are stored and managed, with a focus on scalability, standardization, and sustainability. Our goal is to empower labs with innovative solutions that protect the integrity of their most precious data.
Adil
Yusuf
We build AI models to create novel, high performing biomolecules faster. Our AI models simulate the biophysical properties of biomolecules and identify the most promising ones to be tested in the lab.
Sam
Rodriques
Minus Coffee gives you that legendary coffee taste and all the morning pick-me-up you crave, while also leaving you proud that you are doing your part to contribute to the planet.
Richard
Yu
Abalone Bio is tackling one of pharma’s toughest challenges—discovering antibody drugs that safely and specifically activate hard-to-target membrane proteins like G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).
Tim
Schnabel
Switch Bioworks, the living fertilizer company, spun out of Stanford University in 2022 and is headquartered in San Carlos, CA. The company’s internationally trained team of experts develops microbes that produce sustainable nitrogen fertilizer powered by next-generation synthetic biology. As part of the growing global bioeconomy, Switch Bioworks pledges its mission to improve planet health while also dropping the price of fertilizer at the farm gate.
Jacob
Borrajo
Amber Bio is a biotechnology company pioneering new gene editing modalities using multi-kilobase edits to reach previously undruggable patient populations. The current paradigm in genetic medicine relies on developing independent therapies for each separate mutation in the patient population.
April
Schleck
Tess
Bevers
Novogaia is accelerating the discovery of natural products from fungi through cutting-edge machine learning and metabolomics. They are building a platform to rapidly screen fungal chemical space, identifying novel bioactive molecules for applications across health and agriculture.
Ashton
Trotman-Grant
Karyo Studios is an entertainment company that explores the future of synthetic biology through game design. Our flagship platform, Project Grow, uses multi-agent environments to simulate and capture the ‘What If…?’ of biotechnology through gameplay.
Ivana
Vasic
The egg retrieval process, which is at the core of IVF, has remained largely unchanged for over 40 years. At Vitra Labs, we are pioneering a new approach to egg retrieval driven by high-throughput, autologous cell fate engineering. Our method involves collecting a sample of cells without the need for hormone stimulation and maturing them ex vivo in a controlled environment.
Janine
Sengstack
Junevity is a biotech rewinding complex metabolic disease. Based on 6 years of breakthrough research at UCSF, Junevity’s REWIND platform identifies high-level regulators of metabolic disease with known pharmacological pathways. Junevity is advancing multiple therapeutic programs towards a new era of medicines.
Trevor
Martin
Mammoth Biosciences is a biotechnology company focused on leveraging its proprietary ultracompact CRISPR systems to develop long-term curative therapies, as well as other applications such as decentralized precision diagnostics.
AJ
Addae
SULA LABS is a cosmetic R&D lab that develops and tests formulas and ingredients for darker skin tones & Black owned brands. Current client portfolio includes brands affiliated with Ulta Beauty, Sephora, Credo Beauty, and indie brands.
Jasmin
Hume
Shiru uses AI, bioinformatics, and precision biology to discover and produce high-value ingredients.
Liz
O'Day
Olaris is a precision diagnostic company using a comprehensive metabolite profiling platform and AI to empower patients with knowledge that they are on the optimal treatment path.
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.
Jen
Nwankwo
1910 Genetics is the only biotechnology company advancing small and large molecule drug discovery with a multimodal AI platform powered by laboratory automation. We integrate AI with three proprietary data streams – computational data, wet lab proxy biological data, and wet lab ground truth biological data – to deliver novel drug candidates and software solutions to leading pharma and tech partners, and advance our internal pipeline for neurological, autoimmune diseases, and cancer.
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.
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.
Jake
Becraft
Strand Therapeutics is a clinical stage biotech company pushing forward the next-generation of mRNA therapeutics, bridging the gap beyond vaccines into disease treating therapies. Strand’s first clinical program builds tumor-specific mRNAs for solid tumor immunotherapy, with a robust pipeline for diseases from auto-immunity to cell therapy.
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.
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.
Luciano
Bueno
Launched in 2019, GALY is a climate tech company dedicated to developing novel cellular agriculture products.
Jack
Geremia
Matterworks is using the power of AI to fundamentally change the impact of biological measurements and observations.
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.
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.
Jared
Kehe
Concerto Biosciences examines the microbial world with unmatched experimental depth to discover breakthrough microbe-based products.
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.
Josie
Kishi
Digital Bio focuses on integrating technologies that enable mapping biological interactions in their native tissue context, and deploying these at the scale needed to understand and impact human disease.
Nabiha
Saklayen
Cellino is building a scalable, automated biomanufacturing system for potentially curative personalized cell therapies. Cellino’s vision is to enable healthier lives worldwide with personalized treatments derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can serve as the basis for therapies for a host of chronic degenerative diseases, including vision loss and Parkinson’s disease.
Dan
Mandell
GRO Biosciences transforms protein therapeutics with new amino acid building blocks to treat incurable diseases.
Tim
Wannier
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.
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).
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.
Mimoun Cadosch Delmar
Matterworks is using the power of AI to fundamentally change the impact of biological measurements and observations.
Christoph
Muus
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.
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.
Luciano
Santollani
Prox Biosciences is an early-stage biotechnology company developing targeted biologics.
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.
Josh
Peters
Prox Biosciences is an early-stage biotechnology company developing targeted biologics.
Bogdan
Knezevic
Kaleidoscope is building an operating system for R&D. With Kaleidoscope, biotech teams can aggregate, distill, visualize, and track the key data that powers their most critical decisions — significantly slashing operating costs, speeding up time to market, and iteratively improving decision-making. Kaleidoscope enables team leaders and executives to see live data summaries that critically inform their operations.
Demetri
Maxim
Nephrogen is a biotech company in New York developing curative gene therapies for kidney diseases. We’re starting with polycystic kidney disease (PKD), an incurable and often deadly disease affecting 600,000 Americans.
Rayees
Rahman
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York City. We are a drug discovery company developing a new generation of therapeutics that embrace the complexity of disease.
Mat
Legut
OverT Bio is a preclinical cell therapy company pioneering high-throughput, data-driven functional genomics to design and develop effective and safe cellular therapies for solid tumors.
Yash
Shevde
Ursa Bio is an aerospace medicine company solving health issues in astronauts during prolonged spaceflight and off-world living.
Elizabeth
Wood
CAR-T is for more than just oncology. Using the full potential of gene editing, we are creating a therapeutic platform for cell based therapies that are not just disease modifying: they are curative and definitive.
Michael Retchin
Glen
Gowers
Basecamp Research is a London-based start up using computer science and biology to learn from nature to build a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future.
Nick
Kral
Phytoform is making agriculture more sustainable.We are unlocking the genetic potential of crops to mitigate and tackle climate change, inefficiencies in the supply chain and nutritional profile of crops.
Simon
Kohl
Jen
Keane
Modern Synthesis is a London-based biotech company bringing life to new materials. We work with bacteria to produce an entirely new class of nanocellulose-based materials which offer performance without plastics and aesthetics without animal inputs, designed for applications within fashion and beyond.
Alon
Galor
Max
Jamilly
At Hoxton Farms, we are cultivating a delicious fatty future. We grow real animal fat – without the animals – to make meat alternatives that look, cook and taste like the real thing. Cofounded in 2020 by Max Jamilly and Ed Steele, we are a team of 45 based in London, building the world’s most scalable and cost-effective platform for mammalian cell biomanufacturing.
Ed
Steele
At Hoxton Farms, we are cultivating a delicious fatty future. We grow real animal fat – without the animals – to make meat alternatives that look, cook and taste like the real thing. Cofounded in 2020 by Max Jamilly and Ed Steele, we are a team of 45 based in London, building the world’s most scalable and cost-effective platform for mammalian cell biomanufacturing.
William
Pelton
Phytoform is making agriculture more sustainable.We are unlocking the genetic potential of crops to mitigate and tackle climate change, inefficiencies in the supply chain and nutritional profile of crops.
Laksh
Aithani
CHARM Therapeutics is discovering and developing small molecule medicines against difficult-to-drug targets with our proprietary 3D deep learning-enabled platform, DragonFold. Powered by the first high throughput protein-ligand co-folding algorithm and a world-class team of scientists and engineers, CHARM seeks to deliver innovative approaches to create life-changing therapies for patients.
Andrew
Heron
Portal’s mission is to provide scientists and clinicians with fundamental tools to understand proteins and metabolites, enabling ground-breaking discoveries in health and biology, and expediting bringing new drugs and treatments to market.
Jessica
Corry
Xterna is a founder-led pre-seed biotech, leveraging cutting edge XNA technologies to engineer next generation drug delivery solutions for currently undruggable cell types
Ignacio
Willats
Mytos automates one of the last highly manual processes in biotech – growing human cells. Our products help teams in drug development and cell therapy save time while increasing the reproducibility of their data. Mytos is backed by a fleet of leading investors including YCombinator.
Ali
Afshar
Mytos automates one of the last highly manual processes in biotech – growing human cells. Our products help teams in drug development and cell therapy save time while increasing the reproducibility of their data. Mytos is backed by a fleet of leading investors including YCombinator.
Max
Doody
Giovanni
Maglia
Portal’s mission is to provide scientists and clinicians with fundamental tools to understand proteins and metabolites, enabling ground-breaking discoveries in health and biology, and expediting bringing new drugs and treatments to market.
Ben
Reeve
Modern Synthesis is a London-based biotech company bringing life to new materials. We work with bacteria to produce an entirely new class of nanocellulose-based materials which offer performance without plastics and aesthetics without animal inputs, designed for applications within fashion and beyond.
Miroslav
Gasparek
Sensible accelerates the development of the next generation of mRNA medicines by design, optimisation and cell-based manufacturing of non-immunogenic, pure, and highly functional mRNA in a scalable and cost-effective way.
