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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.

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A rendering of the Innovative Genomics Institute–Bakar Labs building, which will be constructed at the corner of Oxford St. and University Ave. on the north edge of the Berkeley Innovation Zone. Image: DGA + Weiss/Manfredi

Regents approve IGI-Bakar Labs Building to catalyze science innovation, entrepreneurship

The UC Board of Regents approved a new building for Bakar Labs and the Innovative Genomics Institute, or IGI, at the northwest corner of UC Berkeley’s campus last week. The seven-story,169,000 gross-square-foot facility will be part of UC Berkeley’s Innovation Zone at Oxford Street and University Avenue. After this building and the neighboring Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub finish construction, Bakar Labs will be the largest hub of biotechnology, energy and materials incubators at any U.S. university, according to UC Berkeley News. The construction is scheduled to break ground in 2026, according to the regents’ Finance and Capital Strategies Committee. It is expected to open during the 2028-29 school year. Read post
A rendering of the Innovative Genomics Institute–Bakar Labs building, which will be constructed at the corner of Oxford St. and University Ave. on the north edge of the Berkeley Innovation Zone. Image: DGA + Weiss/Manfredi

Bakar Labs and Innovative Genomics Institute’s Partnership Create New R&D Facility for Startup Biotech Companies

The University of California, Berkeley’s incubator for life sciences Bakar Labs announced construction for a new research and development building on campus for early-stage biotech startups. Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) partnered with Bakar Labs to create the IGI-Bakar Labs building, which will provide housing for expanding startups transitioning out of early incubation stages and aims to retain promising startups within the Berkeley ecosystem. Read post
A rendering of the Innovative Genomics Institute–Bakar Labs building, which will be constructed at the corner of Oxford St. and University Ave. on the north edge of the Berkeley Innovation Zone. Image: DGA + Weiss/Manfredi

University of California, Berkeley biotech incubator plots new building for expanding companies

A biotech incubator at the University of California (UC), Berkeley is getting a boost, launching a dedicated space for expanding companies that have outgrown their starter homes. The incubator, Bakar Labs, is teaming up with UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) to build a new, six-story facility with 72,000 square feet of space. The IGI-Bakar Labs building is slated to finish construction in 2028 and to house up to 14 biotech companies, the incubator said in a July 21 release. It’s intended to give companies enough space to stay in Berkeley once they hire more than 20 or 30 employees. Read post
A group of scientists wearing lab coats

Renasant Bio Launches With $54.5 Million Seed Funding To Develop Kidney Disease Treatments

Renasant Bio has officially launched with $54.5 million in seed funding to develop next-generation disease-modifying treatments for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). ADPKD is the leading genetic cause of end-stage renal failure. The funding round was co-led by founding investor 5AM Ventures, with significant participation from Atlas Venture, OrbiMed, and Qiming Ventures. This capital will advance Renasant’s lead corrector program and fuel discovery efforts for its first-in-class potentiator program. Read post
The Renasant team

Kidney health biotech emerges with $54M to follow in Vertex’s footsteps

A Berkeley, CA-based biotech that wants to replicate Vertex’s success with corrector and potentiator medicines has raised a $54.5 million seed round. The funding, disclosed Thursday morning, will help Renasant Bio get closer to the clinic with small molecule treatment candidates for a leading cause of end-stage renal failure. Renasant is focused on hitting the disease-causing biology of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, or ADPKD. The condition is marked by cysts that form in the kidneys and can lead patients to use dialysis or resort to a kidney transplant. Renasant said 12 million people worldwide have ADPKD. Read post
Emily Conley

East Bay startup led by former 23andMe exec snags $54.5 million to target deadly kidney disease

Patients with a life-threatening genetic kidney condition often feel knocked out with an organ that can balloon to 30 pounds. Now a Berkeley biotech startup led by a former 23andMe executive plans to deliver a one-two punch of its own against the disease. Renasant Bio said Thursday it raised a $54.5 million seed round to create oral drugs targeting ADPKD, or autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. The condition, which fills the kidneys with cysts, is the leading genetic cause of end-stage kidney failure. Read post
The Renasant team

Renasant Bio launches to develop kidney disease treatment

Renasant Bio has launched with $54.5 million in seed financing to develop treatments for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), which causes severe kidney damage. The financing was led by venture capital firm 5AM VentureManagement, with additional funding from Atlas Venture, OrbiMed, and Qiming Venture Partners USA. 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
Deocrative graphic with beanstalk and sun

Synthetic proteins are being built with the help of AI models

Others are taking a slightly different tack. Profluent, in Emeryville, California and EvolutionaryScale, in New York, are building protein-design AI models that resemble not image-generating software, but large language models (LLMs) of the sort that power the world’s chatbots. These firms’ models treat the amino-acid sequences in protein chains like the words in a piece of text—analysing relationships found in zillions of exemplars to design novel useful structures. According to Ali Madani, Profluent’s chief executive, the firm is particularly focused on creating new CRISPR-Cas gene-editing tools. Here, its USP is a curated database of around 5m CRISPR-Cas protein complexes on which its AI model has been trained in order to design new versions. Read post
Aikium receives the Nebius award onstage in the Netherlands

Aikium Wins Nebius AI Drug Discovery Award

Aikium targets “undruggable” proteins comprising half the human proteome using its Yotta-ML² platform. The company has secured partnerships with four organizations, including three top cancer hospitals, based on successful GPCR proof-of-concept work. 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

Sampling Human Named as One of Top Five Emerging Startups Harnessing Single Cell Sequencing

Sampling Human genetically engineers yeasts to detect and classify specific cells such as cancer cells hidden within millions of other cells. They also allow users to measure RNA and protein levels in the target cells. This has the potential to supercharge liquid biopsies—the ability to detect cancer cells in the blood—by making them faster and more precise. Unlike traditional approaches, it does not require expensive equipment and specialist staff to use. Sampling Human raised $2 million in 2022 in a round led by i&i Biotech Fund to fuel its research and hire new staff. 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
Artists's depiction of cell assembly line

Cancer-fighting immune cells could soon be engineered inside our bodies

CAR T cells are among the most powerful therapies oncologists have to treat many types of blood cancer. And studies suggest that they might hold promise for brain cancer and other solid tumours, as well as autoimmune and other diseases. One research firm estimates that the value of the CAR-T-therapy market, expected to hit US$11 billion this year, will grow to nearly $190 billion by 2034. But CAR-T therapies come with a serious downside — they are laborious to make and difficult to administer. Some biotechnology companies have an answer: alter T cells inside the body instead...CRISPR–Cas9 pioneer and Nobel prizewinner Jennifer Doudna has co-founded a separate company, Azalea Therapeutics in Berkeley, California, that is developing in vivo CAR T. Read post
Abstract graphic with colored dots in shape of retina

Valitor Presents Multiple Preclinical Datasets on the Potential of its Innovative Anti-VEGF Therapy

“VLTR-559 was developed using our pioneering MVP technology platform and was designed to be an anti-VEGF therapy with increased potency and extended therapeutic duration compared to the current standard-of-care anti-VEGF biologics,” said Wesley Jackson, Ph.D., president and chief scientific officer of Valitor. “Based on our clinical modeling from preclinical results, we anticipate VLTR-559 could enable a twice-yearly dosing regimen for patients with wet AMD, thereby improving long-term outcomes while also reducing the clinical costs required to treat this disease. We are making great progress through IND-enabling activities with the goal of initiating a Phase 1 clinical study next year. Additionally, we are excited by the broader potential of our MVP platform, which is based on our proprietary methods of combining large molecular weight hyaluronic acid biopolymers with diverse active pharmaceutical ingredients to create potent and long-acting drugs.” Read post
plant science

Verinomics and Pinnacle Seed Form Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Innovation in Leafy Greens

Verinomics, a leader in agricultural genomics and gene editing, and Pinnacle Seed, a premier supplier of elite leafy green varieties, today announced a strategic partnership to combine top-tier genetics with cutting-edge breeding and gene editing technologies. The 5-year collaboration aims to develop next-generation leafy green varieties with enhanced disease resistance, improved yield, and superior agronomic profiles to address critical challenges facing growers and the entire supply chain. Read post
Keylika founders, Buddha Chaudhuri, CEO (left) and Frederik Ceyssens, CTO (right)

Keylika Develops World’s First Buccal Patch for Iron Deficiency Anemia

“Most people have no idea how debilitating iron deficiency anemia can be. As a critical micronutrient, iron has a foundational role to play in multiple biological processes in the body down to the cellular level, its uncorrected deficiency has far-reaching consequences,” says Buddha Chaudhuri, Ph.D., CEO of Biotech company, Keylika. After years working on drug delivery and medical devices, Keylika’s team has pioneered what could be a breakthrough solution: the world’s first buccal (oral) patch for treating iron deficiency. Read post