Medical Therapeutics

Vicinitas Therapeutics

Brief Description

Vicinitas Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on targeted protein stabilizers known as Deubiquituinase Targeting Chimeras (DUBTACs). The company’s mission is to use this proprietary technology to solve critical problems in human health by developing next-generation disease therapies against an entire class of previously inaccessible disease-causing proteins. The company spun out of technology that was developed through an academic-industry collaboration between UC Berkeley researchers and Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Timeline 2022...

GenoptX, LLC

Brief Description

A CRISPR-based gene editing company.

Formerly known as Syncodi.

Timeline 2019. Company founded. Inventors

Jennifer Doudna, Abraham Isser Flamholz, Dana Nadler, Benjamin Oakes, David Frank Savage

Geneditor Biosciences, Inc.

Brief Description

Geneditor Biosciences is a pre-clinical stage gene editing company focused on the treatment of rare cancers with unmet medical needs.

Timeline 2021. Company founded. Inventor

Jennifer Doudna

Evercrisp Biosciences

Brief Description

Evercrisp Biosciences is a biotechnology company engineering self-deliverable CRISPR genome editors intended to improve the area of oncology. The company focuses on the discovery and development of protein-based genome editors as therapeutics for multiple disease areas, enabling healthcare organizations to have novel enzymes with high cell permeability and editing efficiency.

Timeline 2021. Company founded. Inventor

Jennifer Doudna

EditPep, Inc.

Brief Description

CRISPR therapies enabled by a simple, potent delivery platform. The biotechnology company creates a class of peptides capable of delivering CRISPR enzymes into clinically-relevant and previously untransfectable cell types, enabling clients to get CRISPR therapies.

Timeline 2021. Company founded. 2023. Company participated Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator, Batch 16. Inventor

Ross Wilson, Dana Foss, Alexander Marson, Srishti Sahu, David-Huy Nguyen, John Hunsinger, Daniel Carr

Azalea Therapeutics, Inc.

Brief Description

Azalea Therapeutics is an early-stage biotech startup on a mission to revolutionize genomic medicines. By designing vehicles that enable cell-specific delivery inside the body, the company aims to unlock precision therapeutics for genetic diseases and unleash the promise of cellular-based therapies. The company's co-founders include Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and UC Berkeley Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology, with Postdocs and a PhD student from her lab: CEO/CSO Jennifer Hamilton (PhD, 2018-2023); Founding Scientist Connor...

Frontier Medicines Corporation

Brief Description

Frontier Medicines was founded to develop medical treatments for currently "undruggable" diseases. The clinical stage precision medicine company pioneers medicines for genetically-defined patient populations in oncology and immunology, and plans to broaden its therapeutic focus over time. The company uses chemoproteomics - an innovative approach to chemically interrogate proteins in living systems – to discover and pharmacologically target new binding pockets (or "hotspots") on proteins, making them accessible to small-molecule drug discovery and development. The...

YourChoice Therapeutics

Brief Description

YourChoice Therapeutics is revolutionizing birth control options for women and men by developing hormone-free contraceptives and bringing them to market. Our technology is the result of a decade of research at the University of California, Berkeley and has been published in numerous high-impact journals.

Timeline 2018. Company founded Inventors

Yuriy Kirichok, Polina Lishko, Nadja Mannowetz, Melissa Miller

Ogma Scientific

Brief Description

Ogma Scientific works with clients in the energy, mining and agriculture sectors and clients in the chemical industry to identify innovative treatment strategies for problems in industrial ecosystems. Our high-throughput screening services are uniquely tailored to identify successful treatments to stop undesirable microbial activity that impacts industrial processes. Examples include biosouring in the oil sector and acid mine drainage in the mining sector. Biosouring alone, caused by the inadvertent stimulation of microbial activity during oil or gas recovery, costs the...

Nurix

Brief Description

Nurix is pioneering rational drug design in the emerging field of protein regulation by targeting E2 conjugating enzymes and E3 ligases that control the Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS).

Regulation of protein stability by the UPS is modulated by the activity of these E2 and E3 enzymes, which control the tagging of proteins with ubiquitin for degradation by the proteasome. The human genome encodes approximately 1,000 different E3 ligases and 60 E2 enzymes. A number of these ligases recently have been shown to play key roles in human diseases, particularly in cancer...