IPIRA Startups

IPIRA Startups

Tenaya Therapeutics

Brief Description

Tenaya Therapeutics is shaping the future of heart disease treatment driven by a mission to discover, develop, and deliver curative therapies that address the underlying drivers of heart disease. Tenaya is developing therapies for rare genetic disorders as well as for more prevalent heart conditions through three platforms: Gene Therapy, Cellular Regeneration, and Precision Medicine. The company was founded by leading cardiology researchers at the Gladstone Institutes and UT Southwestern, and backed by a top-tier syndicate of investors.

Timeline 2016...

Texas Fluorescence Labs

Brief Description

Texas Fluorescence Labs was a reagent and assay technologies company, spun out of modern fluorescent calcium indicator discoveries at UC Berkeley. The company specialized in pioneering new approaches to ion channel and ion transporter-focused basic and translational research and provided reagents, assays, and assay development services to scientists, universities, and laboratories worldwide for research in biochemistry, biomolecular screening, microbiology, and neuroscience.

In 2018, UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Roger Tsien shared the Nobel...

Synvivia, Inc.

Brief Description

Synvivia is a synthetic biology company that optimizes cell behavior for gene therapy manufacturing, providing a practical solution for genetically encoded biocontainment. The company is building genetically encoded biocontainment technologies that will enable the widespread use of synthetic biology outside of the laboratory.

The company's technology was developed at UC Berkeley with grants from the NSF and DARPA. The work was published in ACS Synthetic Biology and featured as an Editor’s Choice in Science Magazine. Synvivia has exclusive license to the...

Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Brief Description

Sunesis is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and future commercialization of new oncology therapeutics for the treatment of hematologic and solid tumor cancers. Sunesis has built an experienced cancer drug development organization committed to improving the lives of people with cancer. The company is focused on advancing its novel kinase-inhibitor pipeline, with an emphasis on establishing proof of concept that it's oral non-covalent BTK inhibitor, vecabrutinib (SNS-062), is effective in the treatment of ibrutinib-resistant chronic lymphocytic...

Silicor Materials, Inc.

Brief Description

Silicor Materials was a global leader in the production of solar silicon. The company was headquartered San Jose, California, with a research and development team located in Berlin, Germany.

The organization was founded as a development company in 2006 under the name Calisolar, with the goal of manufacturing low-cost photovoltaic (PV) solar cells from silicon designed specifically for the solar industry (“solar silicon”) rather than electronic-grade polysilicon. Among the company's founding members was solar energy pioneer UC Berkeley Professor of Materials Science...

Silicon Genesis Corporation

Brief Description

Silicon Genesis Corporation, doing business as SiGen, develops substrate technology, processes, and equipment for semiconductor, solar, display, and optoelectronics markets worldwide. The company provides silicon-on-insulators (SOIs), strained-silicon products, and other engineered multi-layer structures for microelectronic and photonics industries for advanced electronic and optoelectronic device applications. Its products include Stand-Alone Plasma-Activation Tool, a small footprint tool that provides a reactive surface to bond silicon wafers and heterogeneous...

Artris Therapeutics, Inc.

Brief Description

Artris Therapeutics was founded to identify and develop cancer therapeutics. The company was co-founded by UC Berkeley Professor of Chemical Biology and Molecular Therapeutics Daniel Nomura.

Timeline

2017. Company founded Inventors

Leslie Bateman, Jessica Cestellos Spradlin, Tucker Huffman, David Miyamoto, Elizabeth Anne Moore, Truc Bang Nguyen, Daniel Nomura, James Arthur Olzmann, Allison Marie Roberts, Carl Ward

ArKal Medical Inc.

Brief Description

ArKal Medical has developed the next generation continuous glucose monitoring system, using its minimally invasive, proprietary and patented MicroTipª technology. The Microtipsª provide painless access to ISF glucose. The ArKal CGM sensor is worn externally on the skin like a patch and measures glucose using classical electrochemical glucose oxidase enzyme-based chemistry. The GlucoPodª CGM system consists of three main components: a disposable sensor patch, a reusable transmitter, and a reusable wireless smart receiver.

Timeline 2004. Company founded...

Algen Biotechnologies

Brief Description

Algen Biotechnologies is building a next-generation, functional genomics-based platform for the discovery of novel therapeutics for cancers with high unmet need. Algen’s research group focuses on developing and applying novel functional genomics technologies to address scientific challenges in drug discovery. The company's biologists and data scientists are collaborating to deliver innovative, patient-centric medicines for the toughest-to-treat diseases.

The company was founded to commercialize technology developed at UC Berkeley while Algen Biotechnologies CEO...

Ambi Robotics

Brief Description

Ambi Robotics offers advanced robot grasping software for logistics and warehouse order fulfillment, allowing robots to grasp a wide variety of objects.

Ambi Robotics grew from the Dexterity Network (Dex-Net) project at UC Berkeley and is led by Dr. Jeff Mahler and Professor Ken Goldberg, experts in robot grasping with a combined 50+ years of experience.

Formerly known as Ambidextrous.

Timeline 2018. Company founded Inventors

Ken Goldberg, Jeffrey Mahler, Matthew Matl