News

Latest news29

Azulene turbocharges chemistry simulations with “better data, better models”

Using physics and machine learning, the startup is accelerating computational chemical engineering. Read post
Five people standing in a lab

From 0 to 100: How Editpep’s CRISPR Technology and Business Took Off at Bakar Bio Labs

"Editpep is a great example of what can happen when UC Berkeley’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem comes together,” says Darren Cooke, Interim Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer at UC Berkeley. “Through LSEC’s Venture Grant Program, we were able to connect Editpep with funding, mentorship, and key resources like Berkeley SkyDeck, I-Corps and Bakar Bio Labs, paving a path from lab discovery to long-term societal benefit. Helping Ross Wilson and Dana Foss build a business around extraordinary technology has been very rewarding.” Read post
Professor Kathy Collins next to a bench in her lab

Addition Therapeutics: A Third-Way Approach to Genetic Medicine

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. Read post
Amin Zargar

ResVita Bio’s founder designed experiments to kill his own startup. Here’s how it led to the company’s success.

ResVita Bio is developing skin disease treatments through topical genetically engineered bacteria that deliver continuous protein therapy, hardwiring each protein to the needs of the disease they seek to treat – particularly Netherton Syndrome and eczema. Both are skin disorders characterized by chronic skin inflammation – but Netherton Syndrome in particular is fatal for 20% of children. “A lot of first time founders start their company from what they were working on from their PhD or postdoc, so there is this sunk-cost fallacy of, ‘I’ve worked on this, so it has to be ‘worth’ something commercially,’” Amin says. “To me it didn’t have to be ‘worth’ anything. … It was the years of experience that had the value, not the idea. For a startup, I was trying to find an idea worth all my years of experience.” Read post
In Levitree's warehouse facility, 4th St., Berkeley. L-R: Co-founder & COO Laurence Allen, co-founder & CEO Trip Allen, CBO Nick. The tractor on right is remote-controlled and mounts the pump and injector for the wood slurry. Photo: Jim Block

Levitree: Lifting Cities out of Flood Danger with Robots

“San Rafael has the Bay Area’s largest flood problem,” Laurence Allen explains. “It’s a city of about 60,000 people facing a $500 to $900 million flood problem. When you run the math on that, the protection is just unaffordable.” Laurence hopes to help San Rafael and other coastal cities lift themselves out of flood danger using technology developed by Levitree, a Bakar Labs company of which he is COO. In short, Levitree uses robots to lift a property, and everything built on it, by injecting wood slurries deep beneath the surface, where it’s prevented from decomposing back into carbon dioxide. “Reshape the World” is their motto. Read post
The Gigacrop team. L-R: Senior Scientist Michael Dougherty, CEO Chris Eiben, Head of Protein Engineering Juhan Kim, Research Associate III Victor Vela, Scientist II Rahman Pour.

GigaCrop’s Chris Eiben wants to improve photosynthesis. Here’s how he’s doing it.

“The thing holding plants back today is the enzyme Rubisco,” Eiben says. “It’s the first enzyme a plant uses to take CO2 and start turning it into a sugar. But the enzyme is slow, and it has a tendency to use oxygen instead of CO2 . Which is incredibly costly for the plant to fix. I don't have a clever way to make Rubisco better; land plants have been trying to improve it for 450 million years, which is a long time. Doing better than that is tough. So GigaCrop is inserting a parallel photosynthesis pathway into plants. “If a plant were an airplane, what we are doing is installing a more efficient engine. The trick is we have to do it while the airplane is flying. Plants must have a working engine at all times” he says. “Rubisco is part of a larger cycle called the Calvin-Benson cycle. Our pathway can exist next to the Calvin-Benson cycle, and they can both operate. But the plants will benefit because our pathway is faster and more energy efficient.” Read post
The Vivere team. L-R: Dave Schaffer, John Dueber, Melissa Kotterman, Noem Noiwangklang, Hyuncheol Lee, Adam Schieferecke. Photo taken during JP Morgan Healthcare week in SF. Courtesy Vivere.

Seeing the Tumors Again: How Vivere Oncotherapies is Unmasking Cancer

“One of the ways tumors grow within the body is that they can hide from the immune system, says Melissa Kotterman, CEO of Bakar Bio Labs’ newest tenant, Vivere Oncotherapies. “Our technology helps the immune system see the tumors again. We can wake up the immune system and say, ‘Hey, there’s a tumor over here, you can come get it.’” Vivere is engineering a platform to carry and improve the performance of oncolytic viruses that invade and replicate within the cancer cells, signalling the immune system to attack the tumor. Co-founders Hyuncheol Lee and Adam Schieferecke have shown that the engineering platform can be used to improve distribution through the tumor, decrease the tumor size, and increase survival compared to a non-engineered version in a mouse model of colorectal cancer. Read post
Oki O'Connor, Michael Kope, Amelia Anderson

How Cyclarity Therapeutics is Taking On the World’s Leading Killer

You think you don’t know someone with atherosclerosis, but it’s likely you actually do. Atherosclerosis is the build-up of oxidized cholesterol in arteries, an underlying factor in an astonishing 50% of deaths in Western society. An indicator of dementia, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, lung disease, and more, it’s one of the first detectable signs of aging. As co-founder and CEO of scientific affairs at Cyclarity Therapeutics, Matthew “Oki” O’Connor directs a team developing a drug to neutralize this killer. Oki’s potentially life-saving breakthrough came in the form of the least scientific experiment imaginable. In early 2018, he worked in Mountain View at the SENS Research Foundation, which is dedicated to finding cures for aging-related disease. It was on a quiet Friday night when everyone in the lab was either out sick, traveling, or home, that he decided to test out their first prototype. Read post
The Futurebio team in the lab

Is a New Type of Plastic a Solution to the Climate Crisis? FutureBio, First Tenant in Bakar Climate Labs Pilot Program, Says Yes.

FutureBio is the first tenant in the pilot program at UC Berkeley’s new climate tech incubator: Bakar Climate Labs. Until the new incubator on the west side of campus opens in 2028, the pilot program is accepting startups leasing space at Bakar Bio Labs and the QB3 Garage incubator in Stanley Hall. But FutureBio isn’t waiting for the ink to dry on blueprints—they’re already moving forward, transforming the way we think about plastic and our planet’s future. Read post
brad niles

Tenant Spotlight on ARIZ: Rising to the Challenge to Make Cancer Treatments More Humane 

Cancer treatments are often as grueling as the disease itself—chemotherapy can bring unbearable side effects like debilitating fatigue, nausea, and hair loss, leaving patients vulnerable and stripped of their identity. But what if cancer care could be better? More precise? Less harmful? Enter ARIZ Precision Medicine. Their mission is to revolutionize cancer care by developing therapies that not only fight the disease but also preserve the quality of life for patients. Learn how they're doing this in our latest Tenant Spotlight. Read post
aikium

Tenant Spotlight on Aikium: A Trillion Shots at Targeting Tangled Proteins

Aikium has essentially invented a new protein family. Called “SeqR” proteins, they are sequence specific binders that can be applied to different therapeutic needs such as cancer, neuro-inflammation, and some autoimmune disorders. Aikium is going after chemokine receptors, a subset of G-protein coupled receptors, a large class of molecules that have long proven difficult to target. By virtue of being on immune cells, they are front and center in cancer and immune-mediated diseases. Read post
Steve Lo

What Makes a Good CEO? Steve Lo, Former Valitor CEO, Has Answers

A "mentorship mentality" shapes the trajectory of aspiring leaders. By mentoring others, leaders not only hone their technical knowledge but also practice crucial soft skills such as effective communication. Moreover, mentorship fosters a sense of community and support, enabling CEOs to cultivate a strong network. Read post
Venkat Reddy, Greg Timblin, Ingrid Caton & David Moffat

Tenant Spotlight on Inapill: A Novel Approach to Interrupting Inflammation

“We hope this new oral therapeutic targeting proinflammatory immunometabolism will have 'pipeline-in-a-pill' potential,” says CEO and co-founder Greg Timblin. “Once it garners FDA approval in one inflammatory indication, it could be used in the clinic as a treatment across multiple inflammatory diseases. Perhaps it could even provide benefit to patients with more complex diseases where excessive inflammation is thought to be a driving factor, such as cardiometabolic and neurodegenerative diseases.” Read post
Shakked Halperin

Rewrite and Replace: Shakked Halperin, Serial Entrepreneur

“CRISPR offered a pair of DNA scissors that were going to change the world,” Shakked says. “But I didn’t want to just cut. I wanted to rewrite with full control over the target sequence, so with Rewrite I turned to nature’s DNA writer – DNA polymerases – and made something closer to a pencil.” Read post
Beth Zotter and Julian Rees

Umaro and HOPO, Bakar Labs Tenants, Partner in DOE-Funded Project to Extract Rare Earth Elements from Seaweed

Two Bakar Labs tenants, Umaro and HOPO, have forged an unlikely partnership to extract rare earth elements from seaweed in a project funded by a $1.78 million grant from the US Department of Energy. The award was announced Thursday, November 2, through the ARPA-E program. The joint project will explore seaweed as a sustainable source of rare earth elements, such as neodymium and dysprosium, crucial for advanced manufacturing. Sectors that could benefit include renewable electricity, computer chips, and electric vehicles. Read post
The Minutia team, all business. Bottom row from left: Molly Klimak, Sean Meyer, Victor Mann, Katy Digovich, Janna Register, Sapna Puri, Debapriya Saha. Top from left: Helen Clark, Bill Hyun, Christian Schuetz, Johnny Ma, Jessica Chavez.

Hope on the Horizon: How Minutia Plans to Cure Diabetes with Cell Therapy

“I grew up in Silicon Valley, around this energy that a company is a great vehicle to build something of value,” said Katy. “I want to build things that need to exist in the world, and at Minutia, we’re doing this in two ways: cell therapy and the cell based sensors that can help ensure safety and improve efficacy of cell therapies.” Minutia’s cell therapy is a functional cure for type 1 diabetes that involves transplanting insulin producing cells just underneath the skin. Not only is this safer and less invasive compared to some existing cell therapies, which require surgically implanting cells into the liver, but Minutia’s cells are paired with nanosensors that bring the medical marvels of science fiction to real life. Read post
Yana Aznavour and Max Sorokin

Empowering Women, One Test at a Time: The Endometrics Approach to Endometriosis

Roughly 190 million women suffer from endometriosis worldwide. In endometriosis, the tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing debilitating pelvic pain and infertility. The chronic pain can last for almost a lifetime - but despite the severity of the pain, many women don’t even realize they have a disease. And it can be difficult for doctors to tell, too. As the CEO and founder of Bakar Labs tenant Endometrics, Dr. Aznavour is dedicated to bridging the gap between patients and easy, painless diagnosis. Read post