Research Tools

ZestBio

Brief Description A biotechnology company harnessing synthetic biology to convert the low value, abundant fruit and vegetable byproducts like citrus peels and sugar beet pulp into useful products such as household cleaning ingredients, bio-based plastics, vitamins, and other specialty chemicals, thereby enabling customers to receive renewable, eco-friendly products at a reasonable cost. Inventors

John Dueber, Ryan Joseph Protzko

Company Founders

John Dueber, Luke Latimer (UC Berkeley, Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy, 2017, Chemistry), Ryan Protzko (UC Berkeley, Ph.D.,...

Zephyrus Biosciences, Inc.

Brief Description

This life science research tools company was spun out of technology developed in the UC Berkeley bioengineering department. Zephyrus Biosciences developed medical research tools for single-cell analyses, enabling high resolution biology. The company's first product, called Milo, was a benchtop instrument that allowed researchers to search for specific proteins in about 1,000 single cells at once. This improved western blotting instrument made it possible to analyze individual cells for the first time. The high-throughput and high-selectivity protein fingerprinting gave...

Xenometrix, Inc.

Brief Description Xenometrix, Inc. developed proprietary gene response profiling and genotoxicity technologies to enable high throughput screening for genotoxicity, helping the pharmaceutical industry improve the effectiveness of drug discovery and development through lead compound optimization. The company's goal was to accelerate the selection of promising drug and chemical leads for pharmaceutical, chemical, and biotechnology industries. The company's bioinformatics team assembled a database of gene profiles for public domain pharmaceuticals. Inventors Bruce Ames, Pauline Gee, Dorothy...

Vitrichoric, Inc.

Brief Description

Vitrichoric, Inc. develops technology for high-stability supercooling of aqueous solutions or suspensions for the preservation of biological matter.

Inventors

Gabriel Nastase, Boris Rubinsky, Gideon Ukpai

Timeline 2021. Company founded

Ventria Biosciences (formerly known as Applied Phytologics Inc.)

Brief Description

Ventria Bioscience is a privately held biopharmaceutical company with a product pipeline enabled by ExpressTec. ExpressTec is a patented, plant-based recombinant protein manufacturing technology that delivers a ten-fold higher recombinant protein yield than other plant-based systems. Ventria Bioscience's platform technology delivers meaningful and sustainable economic advantages by enabling new product opportunities that were not previously available. It can be used to develop new biotherapeutics, novel vaccines, reagents for biomanufacturing, and industrial and biofuel...

Vedere Bio II

Brief Description

Vedere Bio II is pioneering beyond traditional gene therapy to not just slow vision loss from inherited retinal degenerations (IRDs) or dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD) with geographic atrophy (GA), but actually restore it.

Inventors

Matthew Banghart, Michael Hayden Berry, Katherine Borges, Johannes Broichhagen, John Flannery, Doris Fortin, Benjamin Gaub, Scott Franklin Geller, Pablo Gorostiza, Karen Isabelle Guerin, Amy Holt, Ehud Isacoff, Richard Kramer, Joshua Levitz, Katharine Munckton, Autoosa Salari, Dirk Trauner, Meike Visel, Matthew Volgraf...

Totality Biosciences

Brief Description

Totality Biosciences is producing plant-based human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), a high-value bioactive found in human breast milk. The breast milk substitute promises to improve nutrition in infant formula. The company also intends to supply complex HMOs for research and development of therapeutics.

Inventors

Patrick Shih, Collin Robert E. Barnum

Company Founders

Patrick Shih

Timeline

2025. Company founded

Tilden Bio

Brief Description

Development of photosynthetic bioproducts including natural plant essential oils, cannabinoids, and biopharmaceutical proteins. The technology has been applied to enhance yields of high-value photosynthetic bioproducts in the UC Berkeley Melis Laboratory.

Formerly known as Tabletop Energy.

Inventors

Nico Betterle, Fiona Davies, Cinzia Formighieri, Diego Hidalgo Martinez, Henning Kirst, Andrew Saphire, Hsu Ching Wintz, Andreas Zurbriggen, Anastasios Melis

Company Founders

Jerry Riessen

Timeline 2019. Company incorporated

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...

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 spun out of a new method for creating three-dimensional human heart tissue from stem cells, developed in a collaboration between UC Berkeley Professor of Materials Science...