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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.

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Valitor logo

Berkeley Startup Raises $28M, Nabs Ex-Zosano Chief as CEO as It Aims for the Eye

Valitor Inc. and its platform technology — spun out of the work of University of California professors Kevin Healy and David Schaffer — looks to take on big players in the ophthalmology space, namely Genentech Inc. and its wet age-related macular degeneration drug Lucentis and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Eylea. Read post
Valitor CEO Steven Lo (left) and President & CSO Wes Jackson (right)

Valitor Raises $28M Series B to Develop Therapy for Age-Related Macular Degeneration

The company will spend next year testing its multivalent polymer to prep for a clinical trial in 2024. The goal is to create an injectable that can last six months, meaning patients with wet AMD, a chronic eye condition that blurs vision and can sometimes cause blind spots, would only need two injections per year, kind of like going to the dentist, quipped Wesley Jackson, co-founder, president and CSO, in an interview with Endpoints News ahead of the launch. Read post
Perlumi's Chris Eiben at the bench.

Tenant Spotlight: Perlumi’s Plan to Perfect Photosynthesis 

“We can’t make more land, so we need to be more efficient with it. One way to do this is to make plants fundamentally better at photosynthesis. If you make photosynthesis better, you solve a lot of problems at the same time. You increase food security, you can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere for the long term, and you can spare land for biodiversity.”  Read post
Illustration of protein being sequenced

Glyphic Biotechnologies Wins $409K SBIR Grant From NIH

Congratulations to Glyphic Biotechnologies! NIH recently reported the company had been awarded a $409 SBIR grant for their project "Single-molecule protein sequencing by iterative isolation and identification of N-terminal amino acids." The company is developing and commercializing technology to sequence proteins — instead of DNA. They're hiring! Read post
Josh Yang and Daniel Estandian at the bench at Bakar Labs

Bringing Biotech to Market: Master of Translational Medicine Alum Advances Medical Technologies With Two Startups

Co-founded last year with fellow Berkeley alum Daniel Estandian, VC-funded Glyphic Biotechnologies’ single-molecule protein sequencer may upend the way that pharmaceuticals are developed. By modifying the standard process for sequencing proteins — including the use of a novel molecule that improves identification — their results are not only more accurate but also significantly faster than the predominant methods being used today. Read post
The Catena team (L-R: Samantha Brady, Chanez Symister, Maxwell Nguyen, Marco Lobba) at the opening launch event for Bakar Labs and the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub. UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser.

Tenant Spotlight: Catena Biosciences and Next-Generation Protein Coupling

How can we direct therapeutics to where we want them to take effect? Often the solution lies in attaching, or conjugating, a therapy to another molecule that performs the targeting function. “We discovered a new protein conjugation process that allowed us to build things like CRISPR base editors,” says Catena CEO and co-founder Marco Lobba. “It’s not just applicable to Cas9, but also to antibodies, cell-based therapies, and several other types of new drugs." Read post
cartoon graphic of two people shaking hands

CF Foundation’s First ‘Golden Ticket’ Contest Announces Winners

“Our winners are great examples of the companies the Foundation wants to attract – bold, innovative, and unafraid of the challenges ahead. These are the types of early-stage technologies we need to nurture today to bring us closer to a cure for CF tomorrow,” Martin Mense, PhD, senior vice president of drug discovery and director of the CF Foundation Therapeutics Lab. Read post
A plate of Umaro's bacon made from seaweed

Vegan Bacon Brand from Shark Tank Hits Restaurants

Umaro dives into a new type of technology to create vegan alternatives. Co-founders Beth Zotter and Amanda Stiles picture the future of protein from seaweed farms, a sustainable solution in vegan meat production. The vegan company is the first to develop and use red seaweed protein as an umami-enhancing ingredient in their bacon. Read post
BridgeBio logo

BridgeBio Pharma Announces Founding Affiliation with Bakar Labs, Incubator at UC Berkeley’s Bakar BioEnginuity Hub

“Partnering with UC Berkeley and QB3 to launch Bakar Labs is a natural extension of our mission to discover, create, test, and deliver transformative medicines to as many patients as possible. Through this collaboration, we aim to strengthen the Bay Area biotech ecosystem and potentially unlock new therapies for patients with unmet needs,” said BridgeBio founder and CEO Neil Kumar, Ph.D. Read post
Vicinitas logo on a wavy background

Vicinitas Therapeutics Launches With $65 Million in Series A Financing to Advance Precision Medicines to Stabilize Key Proteins to Treat Disease

“The concept of chemically induced proximity – using multispecific molecules to bring two targets physically together – has yielded notable successes in the field of protein degradation,” said Jorge Conde, General Partner at a16z. “Vicinitas is leveraging its proprietary DUBTAC platform to pioneer the emerging space of targeted protein stabilization. This approach has the potential to access highly valued yet currently undruggable proteins and create differentiated therapies that will impact patient lives.” Read post
Derek Sims, Cornell Mallari, and Terry Hermiston of Coagulant in the lab

Coagulant Therapeutics Announces Publication of In Vivo Data Demonstrating Safety and Efficacy of CT-001 for the Management of Acute Bleeding

Uncontrolled bleeding is the single largest cause of death among individuals ages 1 to 44 years. In fact, 40% of all trauma deaths are a result of blood loss. And yet, on the other side of the spectrum, blood clots can lead to another set of serious health problems. That’s why Coagulant is developing CT-001, a recombinant coagulation factor that circulates in the blood for only 3 minutes. Read post
Beth Zotter holding some kelp

Is Seaweed the Next Big Alternative to Meat?

Smithsonian Magazine covers the emerging sector of foodtech companies, including Bakar Labs tenant Umaro Foods, making delicious products from one of the world's great underused resources: kelp. Umaro CEO Beth Zotter says “[Bacon is] a product notorious for being hard to give up for vegetarians. It’s sort of like the gateway drug that makes people revert back to full-on carnivory." Read post