Addition Therapeutics: A Third-Way Approach to Genetic Medicine
By Ruhani Chhabra.
“Being a Bakar Fellow was a check-plus mark for anyone who knew the Bay Area ecosystem,” says Kathy Collins, PhD, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cellular biology and co-founder of Addition Therapeutics. “Just the fact that the program had validated the idea was huge.”
The idea Collins is referring to originated from decades of research. The field of genetic medicine is dominated by CRISPR and viral vectors. But these technologies involve certain risks—CRISPR makes double-stranded cuts in DNA, and viral vectors can trigger immune responses or insert genes unpredictably. Addition is developing a different approach: it delivers therapeutic RNA along with a specialized enzyme called a reverse transcriptase, which copies the RNA into DNA at its target site. That DNA becomes stably inserted into the genome, restoring function without the need for viruses or genome slicing. Addition’s solution reduces the risks of immune activation, off-target mutations, and complex DNA delivery. The Bakar Fellows Program has supported Collins’ company every step of the way, which has helped transform a bold but academic idea into a promising therapeutic program.
At UC Berkeley, Collins and her lab investigated telomerase, a reverse transcriptase that protects the ends of chromosomes. Her research led her deeper into the world of reverse transcriptases, which are typically associated with viruses like HIV. However, she untapped what had largely been ignored by prior scientists—non-viral reverse transcriptases embedded in animal genomes that could be repurposed for human health.
As her lab’s discoveries gained traction, so did the urgency to bring them to reality. Collins became a Bakar Fellow in 2016. In 2019, she won an NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Pioneer Grant, signaling that her approach had transformative potential. In 2021, she co-founded Addition.
The Bakar Fellows Program provided instrumental assistance at this early stage, offering vital guidance, resources, and infrastructure to help Collins transition from an academic researcher to an entrepreneur. Addition became the first UC Berkeley-founded startup to move into Bakar Labs, the university’s flagship life science incubator. At the time, the facility was still being fully outfitted, but access to early lab space and the physical proximity to her university lab proved invaluable.
“When the company was starting, I could just walk over [to Bakar Labs], go to their group meeting, and then come back,” says Collins. With both the academic and startup teams just minutes apart, she could actively guide experiments and support day-to-day operations without giving up her research role on campus.
Addition benefited from being part of the broader Bakar Labs ecosystem, which offers a unique continuum of support for scientific founders: research funding through the Bakar Fellows Program, lab space and community at Bakar Labs, and venture investment from BEVC, a VC firm that backs startups emerging from this innovation-rich environment. BEVC has remained a supportive partner and investor as Addition grows beyond Bakar Labs, providing not only capital but also access to networks and expertise in life sciences.
“Addition’s elegant, modular gene PRINTTM platform is creating a new category in genetic medicine, enabling in vivo, durable insertion of long genetic payloads with scalable manufacturing,” says Widya Mulyasasmita, co-founder and managing partner at BEVC. “It’s exactly the kind of breakthrough science and executional leadership we look to support. The team is laser-focused and continues to deliver impressive data. We’re proud to back them through the Bakar ecosystem and beyond.”
Now, the Addition team continues to build on its original vision, developing a new class of gene therapies that bypass the risks of viral delivery and genome cutting. Their approach could deliver one-time genetic edits that could reduce the need for repeated therapy, improving the quality of life for many patients. The Bakar Fellows Program is proud to have played a role in advancing a platform that could redefine how genetic diseases are treated.
