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Patient-Centered Endpoints for Biotech Startups: Choosing Outcomes That Matter in the Real World
CURE. – By making endpoints patient-centered from the outset, founders ensure the focus remains on how patients feel, function, and survive, said Amin Zargar, PhD, CEO of ResVita Bio, a company using synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to develop therapies for skin diseases such as Netherton Syndrome. These endpoints reflect the aspects of treatment and disease management that matter most to patients themselves. When defining them, Zargar said, founders should prioritize factors like symptom burden, quality of life, functional status, and treatment tolerability. Read post
Tenant Spotlight
Transition is transforming copper mining, supercharging rock-munching microbes
The company’s performance-maximizing additives boost ore-eating organisms, for cheaper, greener biomining Read post
Bakar Labs News
Jill Fuss, champion for science and tech entrepreneurship, awarded the 2026 QB3-Bakar Labs Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
We are delighted to announce that Jill Fuss, managing director of Activate Berkeley, was awarded the QB3-Bakar Labs Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The award celebrates innovation and enterprise across the life science sector by spotlighting thinkers and leaders who have not only excelled in their own careers but also work to strengthen the broader community of bio-entrepreneurs. Read post
Company News
Unique Almond Variety Generates Exciting Times for Plant Genetics
With 3,000 miles between them — and not much precedent behind the wheel — Stephen Dellaporta, in New Haven, CT, and Tom Burchell, in Oakdale, CA, began a gene-editing partnership in 2019. Their destination: creation of the first Nonpareil almond that is self-compatible and pollen cross compatible with any other almond variety. “When Tom and I got started on this project, even though there had been enormous activity and investment by a number of people, nobody had regenerated Nonpareil in tissue culture. It hadn’t been done,” Dellaporta, the founder of agricultural genomics company Verinomics, says. “We had our hands full, Tom and I.” Which says a lot about the task at hand. Verinomics, since 2016, has been integrating genomics, computational biology, and gene editing into breeding programs to accelerate crop innovation. Read post
Company News
Vivere Oncotherapies Announces >$10M Funding to Develop Targeted Therapies for Solid Tumors
Vivere Oncotherapies, a UC Berkeley spin-out developing cancer therapies that activate the immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells in immunologically cold tumors, today announced over $10M in funding from YK Bioventures, Pillar, Berkeley Frontier Fund, Freeflow Ventures and The National Cancer Institute. Leveraging technology that enables engineering of targeted immunotherapies, Vivere will develop transformative treatments for difficult-to-treat cancers that otherwise evade immune system detection and for which there are few effective treatments. Read post
Company News
Renasant Bio Named to BioSpace’s NextGen: Class of 2026
Renasant’s post on LinkedIn: “We’re honored to be recognized by BioSpace’s NextGen: Class of 2026 — a list celebrating the most promising early-stage life sciences companies driving innovation and growth in a challenging market. Being included among this outstanding group reflects the hard work and dedication of our entire team as we advance next-generation disease-modifying therapies for patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). Thank you to BioSpace for this honor — and to our investors, partners, and supporters who share our mission to make a meaningful impact in lives of patients living with ADPKD.” Read post
Company News
UC Berkeley spinout raises $100 million for gene-therapy approach that ‘unlocks a world of possibility’
A spinout from the labs of University of California, Berkeley, professor Kathleen Collins and the campus’ Bakar Bio Labs incubator, Addition is working on a different way to package and deliver long-lasting, life-changing “genomic medicines.” Addition’s team, now numbering 50, “spent four years with our heads down on the science, and we’re feeling good,” Park said. “It’s a good base to talk to people externally, unstuffing.” The technology is one thing, but there’s another thing that’s got Park excited about Addition: the big picture. Addition’s approach opens the possibility of delivering one-shot-and-done therapies or redosing therapies for less. Read post
Company News
Addition Tx does the math and emerges from stealth with $100M, biotech vets on exec team
It’s early days for the startup, but its core tech is centered on its all-RNA, nonviral, lipid nanoparticle-based PRINT (Precise RNA Mediated Insertion of Transgenes) platform. The idea is to create “safer, durable, one-time therapies, overcoming limitations of current genetic medicine modalities,” the biotech said in a Dec. 17 statement. Details on disease targets are thin on the ground, but Addition says it is seeking to “redefine how chronic and rare diseases are treated.” Initial preclinical work is slated to begin next year. One area of work Addition has already spotlighted is HIV. Using a Gates Foundation grant, Addition will use one of its so-called PRINTed programs that aim, with a single dose, to allow endogenous production of antibodies to “provide lifetime protection against HIV.” Read post
Company News
Small Molecules to Correct a Rare Kidney Disease: Emily Conley on the Long Run
The big idea at Renasant is to develop oral small molecule drugs to treat patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, known as ADPKD. Patients with this disease develop cysts on their kidneys that sometimes cause the kidney to balloon in size and grow into 30-pound dysfunctional, painful and swollen organs. Scientists think there’s a way to stop it. Renasant is developing small molecule correctors and potentiators that target the polycystin protein abnormalities that drive the disease. If the drugs work as conceived, they would enable people to avoid the grim fate of kidney dialysis or transplant. An estimated 300,000 patients in the US and Europe have the disease, which technically makes it rare, but not that rare. Read postOur affiliates
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Startups need to focus on making milestones, not managing equipment.
Bakar Bio Labs maintains tissue culture facilities, a freezer farm, fume hoods, basic benchtop equipment and plenty of analytical instruments. Optional lab support services can also make for quick starts that help get results fast.
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Bakar Bio Labs is just steps from UC Berkeley’s world-renowned faculty and more than 40,000 students who train in top programs including science, engineering, law and business. Dotting the campus is a network of core facilities that feature a wide range of advanced equipment and services for use by startups. Recruiting student talent and scientific co-founders couldn’t be easier.
Today’s best startups blaze a trail all their own, but they don’t do it alone.
They build their support network to help them navigate the multiple challenges they face. At Bakar Bio Labs, tenants join a community of as many as 50 like-minded teams willing to share the scientific and business insights that help them advance. The incubator spans more than 40,000 square feet of lab and office spaces within the fully renovated Woo Hon Fai Hall, the iconic former home of the Berkeley Art Museum. With so much going on, investors, industry partners and new talent are already taking notice.
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Built for startups. For more than 20 years, QB3 has been the University of California’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship in life science. Through pitch summits, seminars, symposia, podcasts, office hours, internships, and workshops QB3 educates, connects, and elevates the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
