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Marco Lobba and Sophia Lugo

Marco Lobba and Sophia Lugo Named to San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40

Many people don’t end up in the jobs they wanted when they were four years old. But Catena Biosciences CEO Marco Lobba and Radar Therapeutics CEO Sophia Lugo aren’t most people — a fact that didn’t escape the San Francisco Business Times. For their innovative contributions to biotech and precision medicine — Lobba with CatenaBio’s Multi-Payload Conjugate™ antibody-drug combinations, Lugo with Radar’s targeted mRNA therapies — the SF Business Times named both Lobba and Lugo to their 2025 “40 Under 40” class of honorees, recognizing them as two of the most influential and industrious leaders in the Bay Area. The awards will be presented on Friday, April 25 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Read post

Fundraising Strategies & Negotiating Term Sheets with HSBC

Join us for an engaging panel discussion with HSBC diving into fundraising strategies, specifically focusing on challenges in this current market. This conversation will also cover strategies for negotiating term sheets, giving you tools to tackle these negotiations in competitive processes. ​This panel will feature Lindy Fishburne, Managing Partner at Breakout Ventures, Karl Handelsman, Founder and Managing Partner of Codon Capital, and Jonathan Norris, Managing Director at HSBC Innovation. Jesse Essaff, Director at HSBC Innovation Banking, will moderate the discussion. Learn more
Oki O'Connor, Michael Kope, Amelia Anderson

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
mother with her child in a farm

Verinomics Introduces Transgene-Free Gene Editing and Genomic-Driven Accelerated Breeding Platforms for Specialty Crops

Verinomics, a leader in agricultural genomics and gene editing, today unveiled two breakthrough platforms designed to accelerate specialty crop innovation: Genesis™, a transgene-free gene editing platform, primarily for vegetatively propagated crops and Genova™, a genomic-driven breeding acceleration platform for both seed and vegetatively propagated crops. Together, these technologies streamline trait discovery and product development, delivering high-value, market-ready crops faster than ever before. Read post
aikium

Breaking the ‘Undruggable’ Barrier with AI and Synthetic Biology: Eswar Iyer, CEO of Aikium

For decades, drug developers have struggled with so-called “undruggable” proteins—those regions of the proteome that evade traditional small molecules and antibodies. But Aikium, led by Eswar Iyer, could be changing the game. In today’s show, Iyer, a prolific scientist with over 100 patents and a background in George Church’s lab, shares how his company is tackling one of the toughest challenges in therapeutics. Read post
Charles Tait Graves

How Startups Can Minimize Risk in the Area of Trade Secrets

“Any nonpublic item of business information that could be valuable to a competitor is a trade secret,” Graves said. “Business details, product roadmaps, financial information, customer information, if it’s not public and if it would be useful for a competitor, it can be a trade secret. It doesn’t have to be strictly scientific and technical information.” Read post
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The members of Allopartis in the QB3 Garage@UCSF incubator