Azalea Therapeutics: Engineering precise, powerful cancer therapy in vivo
Cell therapies can save lives — but their complexity puts them out of reach for many patients. Azalea Therapeutics is developing a new approach designed to make these treatments faster, simpler, and more accessible.
By Ruhani Chhabra
Current cell therapies rely on extracting a patient’s cells, engineering them outside the body, and reinfusing them to do their work — a process that takes weeks and costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. For many patients, that complexity puts these life-saving treatments out of reach. The next generation of medicine aims to shortcut the process, programming cells directly within patients and turning the human body itself into the site of therapeutic innovation.
Azalea Therapeutics is working to make that shift a reality. The company’s initial focus is on CAR-T therapies, powerful cancer treatments that have shown remarkable success but remain limited by their delivery due to their complexity and cost. Azalea aims to replace this intensive process with a single IV-based approach that engineers those same cells directly inside the body. This approach could dramatically reduce the time and cost of treatment, expanding access to patients who currently can’t receive it.
The technology emerged from years of academic collaboration across top institutions, where CEO Jennifer Hamilton worked alongside the Azalea co-founders: Jennifer Doudna, UC Berkeley professor and Nobel laureate; UCSF’s Justin Eyquem; and Stanford’s Michael Fischbach. Together, the team pursued what Hamilton describes as a “shared vision” of achieving both cell-specific delivery and precise gene insertion at targeted sites in the genome, which has long been considered a “holy grail” in the field.
Their exploratory research quickly evolved into something tangible. “As soon as we started to see that this could be a real thing, we started talking about how we could turn this into a drug that could actually help patients,” Hamilton says.
Since spinning out in 2023, Azalea has grown from a small founding team into a rapidly expanding company, scaling its platform while maintaining a clear focus on translation. Rather than pursuing every possible application of their technology, they prioritize the steps needed to bring it closer to the clinic, aligning their work around the ultimate goal of building therapies that can reach patients.
That focus on goal-oriented science has been supported in part by Azalea’s time at Bakar Labs. When the company first moved into the incubator, the team was just four people. Now grown to 25, it’s one of the largest teams in the building. Instead of committing to a large, fixed lab space, they were able to scale gradually by adding benches, desks, and equipment as their needs evolved.
Just as important, the incubator fostered a collaborative environment. “We were able to grow the company alongside other tenants who are also growing their companies,” Hamilton says — a dynamic that allowed teams to share challenges and navigate similar stages together.
Azalea’s hard work and discipline have not gone unnoticed. Hamilton was recently named to the San Francisco Business Times’ “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” list, while scientific co-founder Connor Tsuchida was named to the SFBT’s “40 Under 40 Class of 2026.” Together, the accolades reflect both the company’s scientific progress and its growing presence in the biotech space. For Hamilton and her team, the awards are also a reminder to stay focused on the work ahead.
Their objective remains clear. “What we really enjoy is working together towards a shared mission… knowing that the technology we’re developing can directly have an impact on patients,” Hamilton says.
