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About Us
Bakar Labs is a world-class incubator for life-science startups. Now open to teams from around the world so anyone can leverage all that UC Berkeley offers.
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Companies
Get to know our tenants, the hardworking innovators at the core of our community.
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Facility
We enable bio startups to hit the ground running and focus on advancing their technology.
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Resources
At Bakar Labs, we connect you to sophisticated resources from UC Berkeley and the Bay Area, tailored to early-stage entrepreneurs.
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Everything that a bio-entrepreneur needs, all in one location.
There has never been a shortage of entrepreneurs with great ideas designed to tackle the most pressing global challenges — from human health to environmental sustainability. But to grow those ideas into successful ventures, entrepreneurs need space, equipment, and multiple connections to a vibrant ecosystem. That’s why we created Bakar Labs, part of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub at UC Berkeley. Bakar Labs is built to be the foundational hub for resources where startups thrive.

What’s happening?
Latest News & Upcoming Events

ARIZ and Catena Awarded Golden Tickets to Bakar Labs, Sponsored by ACS BrightEdge Fund
With the Golden Tickets, ARIZ and Catena each win one year of free office and lab space at Bakar Labs and access to BrightEdge’s robust network of resources to develop their cancer therapies. They will be able to access Berkeley campus resources, connect with Bakar Labs’ business affiliates, and network with more than 30 fellow tenant companies. The combination of support from Bakar Labs and BrightEdge will, most importantly, allow ARIZ and Catena to bring their technology to patients sooner. Read post
Tenant Spotlight on Sampling Human: Using Biology to Analyze Biology
Anyone who’s had a blood draw as a patient – in short, everyone – knows that what the doctor gets to work with is a basic count of red and white blood cells. But there’s so much information that we’re missing, which could help inform and develop much more precise treatment. Daniel Georgiev and Sampling Human want to solve this problem. Their solution: using biology to analyze biology. Read post
Inspired by Founder’s Daughter, East Bay Startup Ray Therapeutics Raises $100M to Tackle Eye Diseases
Ray Therapeutics, housed in the Bakar Labs incubator at UC Berkeley, will use the new funding led by Novo Holdings A/S to push a unique treatment for eye diseases into a clinical trial within the next year, if not sooner. It is zeroing in on diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration that slowly degrade vision. Read post
Why a Renovated Building at One of California’s Top Universities Marks a New Era of Learning
A disused Brutalist building on the University of California, Berkeley’s campus was transformed into a modern life sciences facility supporting the academic and commercial needs of its student body. Read post

AI-Enhanced Protein Design Makes Proteins That Have Never Existed
On 26 January, Profluent came out of stealth mode with $9 million in seed funding to support the company’s efforts to apply machine learning to engineer novel functional proteins. This is just the latest in a steady flurry of investment in this space. Read post
“Can I Cure My Diabetes With Stem Cells?” Katy Digovich Delivers TED Talk
CEO Katy Digovich recently gave a passionate TED Talk about her motivation for launching and leading Minutia. A former Princeton basketball player, Katy lives with diabetes. Working with the Clinton Global initiative in Africa, she learned that people with diabetes in the Third World face an early death sentence due to the cost of insulin monitoring and delivery. Minutia is developing cell therapy in the form of cells engineered with nanosensors to measure insulin levels and deliver dosage. Read post
Tenant Spotlight on Regel Therapeutics: A New Approach to Gene Therapy
“I always used to enjoy science and technological innovation. For a scientist, curiosity leads to discovery, but it is a need that leads to invention. In the back of my mind, I always knew that to make a clinical product into a reality, I have to take the technology out of the lab and develop it in an industry setting. Patients and their caregivers motivated me to take this leap into entrepreneurship,” says Navneet Matharu. Read post
Ready to run?
Startups need to focus on making milestones, not managing equipment.
Bakar Labs maintains tissue culture facilities, a freezer farm, fume hoods, basic benchtop equipment and plenty of analytical instruments. Optional lab support services can also make for quick starts that help get results fast.




At UC Berkeley
Bakar Labs is just steps from UC Berkeley’s world-renowned faculty and more than 40,000 students who train in top programs including science, engineering, law and business. Dotting the campus is a network of core facilities that feature a wide range of advanced equipment and services for use by startups. Recruiting student talent and scientific co-founders couldn’t be easier.
Scale means community

Today’s best startups blaze a trail all their own, but they don’t do it alone.
They build their support network to help them navigate the multiple challenges they face. At Bakar Labs, tenants join a community of as many as 50 like-minded teams willing to share the scientific and business insights that help them advance. The incubator spans more than 40,000 square feet of lab and office spaces within the fully renovated Woo Hon Fai Hall, the iconic former home of the Berkeley Art Museum. With so much going on, investors, industry partners and new talent are already taking notice.
Bringing the innovation community together.
Funding raised to date
Bakar Labs gives startups great exposure to savvy, motivated investors and industry business development.
Tenant and alumni companies
We welcome companies from all sectors of life science who have a need for specialized wet lab operations.
Affiliations
We’re building a mutually beneficial ecosystem that brings startups together with biotech, pharma, VC, law firms and banking.
Built for startups. For more than 20 years, QB3 has been the University of California’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship in life science. Through pitch summits, seminars, symposia, podcasts, office hours, internships, and workshops QB3 educates, connects, and elevates the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
