Companies
Who we bring together sets us apart
Companies
Our tenants span the life science sector, including therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and research tools. They learn from and support each other, often forming partnerships.
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
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
Tenant Spotlight
Tenant Spotlight on Radar Therapeutics: Homing In on Precise, Accessible Genetic Medicines
Genetic medicine promises groundbreaking breakthroughs, but hurdles like precision targeting and sky-high costs remain. Many treatments are slow and out of reach for many. Sophia Lugo, CEO of Radar Therapeutics, is leading the charge for a more accessible future. Read post