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Man standing in field next to small almond tree

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.

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Six members of the Vivere team pose at Bakar Bio Labs

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
The Renasant team

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
Ron Park

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
Ron Park

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
The Renasant team

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 post

Profluent Bio Announces Strategic Collaboration with Ensoma to Develop AI-Designed Base Editors for In Vivo Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapies

Profluent, a leader in frontier AI for protein design, today announced that it has entered into a strategic collaboration with Ensoma, an in vivo cellular engineering company with a mission to advance the future of medicine through one-time therapies. Under the agreement, the companies will leverage Profluent’s AI-designed deaminases in connection with Ensoma’s gene editing scaffolds and helper-dependent adenovirus (HDAd) delivery systems to design, develop, and evaluate AI-designed base editors for in vivo hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) therapies, which will inform future translational decisions. Read post

Azalea Therapeutics Presents New Preclinical Data Demonstrating Robust In Vivo Generation of TRAC-CAR T Cells Using Enveloped Delivery Vehicles

Azalea’s dual-vector platform combines T cell-targeted EDVs delivering Cas9 RNP complexes with a human T cell-tropic AAV carrying a promoterless CAR template. This approach enables precise genomic insertion at the TRAC locus, bringing CAR expression under the control of the native T cell receptor promoter. In vivo TRAC insertion is designed to improve potency, persistence and safety by achieving regulated, physiologic CAR expression rather than continuous signaling from exogenous promoters. Read post
Microscope image of exosomes

Hermes Biosciences Raises Seed Funding to Make Extracellular Vesicles a Practical Tool for Precision Medicine

Hermes Biosciences, a life science tools company developing a benchtop, hands-off system for the isolation of extracellular vesicles (EVs), today announced it raised a Seed financing round to deliver its first commercial instrument in 2026, aimed at clinical researchers across academia, Pharma, and clinical customers who require standardized, scalable workflows. The round was led by Genoa Ventures, with participation from Paladin Capital Group and Vertical Venture Partners. Pre-Seed capital and company formation support were also provided by Genoa’s venture studio, General Inception. Read post
Profluent CEO Ali Madani photographed in the QB3 office.

East Bay AI biotech company raises $106 million from Jeff Bezos and others

Profluent Bio, a three-year-old Emeryville company, was the first to show that large language models can generate functional proteins. It went on to design the first CRISPR genome-editing system from scratch, creating an open-source gene editor known as OpenCRISPR-1. With its new-found cash from Altimeter and Bezos Expeditions, it now hopes to continue applying its genome editors into antibodies, enzymes and immune system-triggering antigens. It already has cut deals with a handful of partners, such as life sciences tools company Revvity Inc. (NYSE: RVTY) — the former PerkinsElmer Inc. — agricultural player Corteva Inc. (NYSE: CTVA) and the Rett Syndrome Research Trust, to make custom proteins. Read post

Profluent Raises $106M to Scale Frontier AI Models for Programmable Biology

Profluent, a leader in frontier AI for protein design, today announced a $106 million financing co-led by Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from existing investors including Spark Capital, Insight Partners, and Air Street Capital. This round brings Profluent’s total funding to $150 million and will accelerate its mission to make biology programmable – transforming how therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture, and biomanufacturing solutions are developed. Read post
Seven people in a group sitting together

New in vivo gene editing biotech blossoms from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna’s lab with $82M

A new West Coast biotech has emerged into the busy in vivo cell therapy space, this time with the backing of Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D. Azalea Therapeutics has bloomed with $82 million in funding and a dual-vector approach that the company hopes can enable permanent genome editing with a single dose. The funding total includes a $65 million series A that was led by Third Rock Ventures, with RA Capital Management, Yosemite and Sozo Ventures joining the financing bouquet. Read post
Seven people in a group sitting together

Jennifer Doudna spinoff aims to turn patients’ immune cells into CAR-T fighters with single shot

A spinout from the lab of Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna has raised $82 million to create drugs that, with a single infusion, can turn patients’ immune cells into cancer- and autoimmune disease-fighting drones. It’s the latest entrant in a high-stakes race to develop what’s known scientifically as in vivo CAR-T treatments. Today’s CAR-T therapies are highly effective at treating certain blood cancers, but patients’ cells have to be removed, reengineered in a facility, and then reinfused — a toxic, expensive, and cumbersome process. Investors and pharma companies are spending billions to create alternatives that transform patients’ cells in their body. Read post
Seven people in a group sitting together

Why Jennifer Doudna, Reed Jobs and others are backing this East Bay biotech’s in-body cell fix-it shop

Azalea's approach is what scientists call in vivo — or in the living body — reprogramming of immune cells. That is one of the hottest areas of cell therapy research because it could make today's chimeric antigen receptor-T cell, or CAR-T, therapies safer, more efficient and more effective. Additionally, having the body's own cellular machine shop serve as a production line for infection-fighting T cells could shave weeks off the process of manufacturing therapies outside the body. Read post
Six scientists wearing white lab coats

‘We want to change the world:’ Company says it is creating a new kind of plastic

FutureBio is tackling the problem of plastic pollution head-on by creating what its co-founder describes as a new kind of plastic. Different from both the petroleum-based and the biodegradable ones now in use, it is not only durable but also bio-renewable and easier to recycle, said Zilong Wang. “It proposes a different and a novel plastic, which is different from all other kinds of plastic,” he said. Worldwide, only about 9% of today's plastic is actually recycled. Most of the rest, millions of tons, goes to landfills or ends up in the environment. Even the plastic that is recycled is sent to landfills or incinerators after one or two cycles because the quality of the material degrades. Read post
Marco Lobba

Marco Lobba Wins 2025 Biocom Catalyst Award: Precision Therapeutics at the Molecular Level

Marco Lobba co-founded CatenaBio to advance targeted therapeutics at the intersection of chemistry and molecular biology. He co-invented the CysTyr platform, enabling precise conjugation of multiple payloads to antibodies for oncology, gene therapy and cell-based therapies. “I truly believe that the biggest challenge in making new therapeutics is how to direct them in the body,” he says. Dr. Lobba earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, training with Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, and holds numerous patents. Beyond CatenaBio, he mentors scientists, supports food equity programs and advocates for investment in basic research to drive future breakthroughs. Read post