January 2026 Updates - The Bioentrepreneurs: Stanford, UCSF, Berkeley

January 2026: Who’s at JPM, pre-clinical developments, and new team members and job postings!

Hey, this is Michael from The Bioentrepreneurs: Stanford, UCSF, Berkeley. Each month, I bring you key updates and exclusive insights straight from the teams driving innovation across these cutting-edge life sciences ecosystems. 

Before we get to it, I wanted to give a special shout out to James and Eldrick from Illuminant. They were were recognized in the Forbes 30 under 30 Healthcare this year. I’ve known James since being his undergrad TA and Eldrick from the beginning of Illuminant. I’m incredibly proud of what they’re building and glad to see them getting recognition for their work, especially in the often underappreciated MedTech space. They join other TBE founders (inc. Clare from Sift Biosciences in 2025) in this honor and many more to come too!

Separately, the email version now has a trimmed down version of the updates. Click through the web version (or see it in the archive) for a read of the updates with all the details and better formatting.

Now, here's what's happening in January 2026:

🤝 Launched research collaboration with Pfizer to discover GPCR-modulating antibodies

🎙 Announced a First-In-Class MMP9-Targeting ASO program for ALS for targeted rescue of motor neuron vulnerability and microglial-driven neurotoxicity

📆 Attending BIO Partnering @ JPM week, Jan 12-15 in San Francisco and Biocom Global Partnering and Investor Conference, Feb 24-26 in San Diego. If you plan to attend, feel free to reach out to [email protected] - they’d be glad to find time to connect!

📊 Development: Cache DNA is continuing to hit key development milestones towards commercialization, unlocking the second tranche of its recent $1.25 million NSF SBIR Phase II grant with Velocity Bio and preparing its latest formulation for Early Access in 2026.

👤 HIRING: Cache is recruiting a new Senior Applications Scientist to drive both internal testing and customer-facing Early Access programs. If you or anyone you know may be a good fit for this Director of Applications position, please reach out to [email protected] or have them apply here.

📆 Conferences: Cache will be on the road at several events this upcoming quarter, raising awareness about its innovations for ambient molecular preservation. Reach out to [email protected] if you'll be at any of these events!
- JPM (January 11-16, San Francisco)
- AGBT (February 23-26, Orlando FL);
- ABRF (March 28-31, Pittsburgh, PA)

📊 Successful pre-IND meeting with the FDA for lead asset CATB-101 greenlights their pathway to the clinic

📊 Completed NHP trials showed exceptional safety and elimination of major off-target toxicity

🏆 CEO Marco Lobba was awarded the Biocom Catalyst Award

👋 Cephla is excited to join the StartX community!

📆 Will be at SLAS (Boston, Feb 7–11), BPS (San Francisco, Feb 21–25), NextGen Omics, Spatial & Data US (Boston, Mar 31–Apr 1), and AACR (San Diego, Apr 17–22). Looking forward to connecting with fellow scientists and builders, and keeping up with the latest in lab automation, biophysics, spatial biology, and cancer research!

⚡ Started leveraging AI to speed up R&D and streamline operations. They've also integrated Claude Code into their open-source microscope control software—looking forward to see how it can empower their users!

📈 New orders from Stanford, UCSF, University of Michigan, Harvard, Uppsala University, KTH, and two startups—and they're deepening collaborations with existing users.

⚡ Launched RamaX, a platform for ultra-fast, high-sensitivity screening of binder libraries at unprecedented scale—processing 100K to 1B minibinders, VHHs, or scFvs in just 1-2 weeks and returning validated hits from naive or AI-designed libraries. Anyone who would be interested in rapidly screening large binder libraries at lightning speed can fill out an intake form or schedule a call. More details on RamaX and case studies can be found in the technical report.

📈 Fast & Curious Tour Update: From October–December 2025, Foldscope’s Fast & Curious program, supported by the Prakash Lab at Stanford University, delivered in-person, train-the-trainer workshops across 7 U.S. states and Washington, DC, directly training 269 educators and community leaders and distributing 18,258 free Foldscopes. The program focused on expanding access to scientific tools and hands-on learning, equipping participants to lead microscopy activities in classrooms and community settings. The program continues into early 2026. More info here

🧑‍🦱 Appointed Sergey Edunov (ex-Meta FAIR) as Senior Vice President of Foundation Models, bringing 20+ years of experience in software engineering and AI research to scale Genesis' AI platform

📆 Attended NeurIPS with 20+ members of the Research and Engineering team, with a live tech talk about the Pearl SOTA co-folding model, a poster on the open-source Pairmixer model, and participation across several workshops and demos.

🎙 Genesis' founder and CEO Evan Feinberg was quoted in GEN about the growing role of life sciences research at the meeting.

🏆 James and Eldrick were honorees in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare Category for 2026!

📆 Will be attending the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference next week. They’ll be at the main Westin event as well as the Convene events sponsored by JP Morgan. Hope to catch other Bioentrepreneurs there (and let Illuminant know if there are any medtech VCs or strategics they should meet while they’re in the Bay Area)

🧑‍🦱 Hired a Software Quality Engineer to join their Quality Team.

🤝 Announced partnership with KilgourMD—a top, fast-growing dermatologist brand for scalp health—to bring peptide-based delivery technology to the scalp wellness and hair health industry

📈 Signing Enterprise licensing contracts with several early to late-stage and clinical stage biotechnology companies: to enable these organizations to securely connect their internal data to the Nextnet ontology and large-scale knowledge graph (semantic web of life sciences). Customers can ask mission-critical questions across their contextual knowledge base and uncover insights that would otherwise remain hidden. For requesting a Nextnet demo, reach out via: https://getnextnet.com/

🧑‍🦱 "Leading Dermatologists Get Skin in the Game" - Parallel announced its new dermatology advisory board that will support the training of its proprietary AI models for predictive health

🏆 Awarded 1st Place at the CES 2026 Enrichers Silicon Valley Funding Summit by an investor panel of judges comprised of over 50 VCs and family offices

🎁 Interested in Parallel's MD-03 Protocol™ to support a chronic skin issue or to improve skin longevity? Build your protocol HERE and use code BIO20ENTREPRENEUR for 20% off through Jan 31, 2026

📈 Doubled revenue YoY and has over 100 partners now! Their team will be at JPM. Reach out to [email protected] if you'll be around and want to connect.

📆 The team will be at JPM in January in San Francisco discussing Ridge Bio's experimentally-informed and AI-designed ProTrigger linker systems for ADC activation in the tumor microenvironment, as well as their NativeLink-AXC bioconjugation enzyme for more stable and homogeneous antibody conjugates with CRDMO and pharma partners. Reach out via their website or the Bio app if you're interested in meeting up there.

🎙 Weston Kightlinger, Ridge Bio's CEO, will be presenting at the Founders at Work speaker series at MBC at 1030 Brittan Avenue, San Carlos.

🚚 Lab Operations: TerraNova Bioremediation recently completed their move-in to their first commercial lab space. With R&D operations starting back up again, they plan to ramp up their scaling process by breaking down real polyurethane waste streams collected directly from manufacturing sites. Additionally, they are collaborating with GeoPulse Solutions to utilize their modular object detection and imaging (MODI) technology to bring a technical advantage to their team, since this technology has never been applied to analyzing plastic material breakdown.

👋 ClimateTech Ecosystem: The CBIO Collaborative is a network of organizations that partner with BEAM Circular, a non-profit who is making great strides at transforming Northern California into a regional bioeconomy powerhouse by supporting waste-to-product and biomass-to-product initiatives spanning academia, industry, and local communities. TerraNova is becoming a full member of the CBIO Collaborative to further integrate themselves into the climate tech ecosystem of Northern California, and plan to use their network to find partners who can supply them with agricultural biomass to help scale their technology. Additionally, this will give them better access to other teams who have similar missions such that they can collaborate.

💰 Funding: As the new year begins, their team is pursuing their fundraising goal of $500,000 for 2026. To help with this, their team is working with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) of Santa Cruz, California to perfect their pitch which will enable them to excel at the pitch competitions, accelerator programs, and other development opportunities they will partake in this year. They have also been working closely with their mentor Brooke Tessman to receive critical feedback.

👤 HIRING: opened a new job posting for Head of Radiopharmaceuticals at TwoStep Therapeutics

🎙 Ali Lashkaripour, CTO and Co-founder, will be presenting at the Microfluidics Consortium 2026 Meeting in San Francisco on January 22nd.

📆 Daniel Mokhtari, CEO and Co-founder, and Ali Lashkaripour will also be attending events in San Francisco during JPM week and look forward to connecting.

🧑‍🦱 Xylo Bio is closing in on getting the Clinical Advisory Board finalized and preparing IB submission for FIH studies this year.

📆 CEO Josh Ismin, Director of BD Samantha Rector (formerly Tabone), and VP of Research Jack Nguyen will be attending the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, CA, from January 12-15.

📆 CSO Dr. Sam Banister will be attending the annual American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Bahamas from January 12-15.

Mostly, JPM 😄 If interested in meeting up, reach out to set up time or get the details of when I’ll be at my JPM Base to drop in and say hey

Saturday, Jan. 10 - NFX Bio Pre-JPM Networking Run (SF) If you’re feeling especially energetic, I’ll be at Marina Run Club for their Saturday run before this

Sunday, Jan. 11 - JPM 2026: Opening Night by Prima Mente & Nebius (SF)

Monday, Jan. 12 - From Noise to Hits in AI-powered Small-Molecule Discovery (SF)

Tuesday, Jan. 13 - UCSF Innovation Showcase (SF)

Wednesday, Jan. 14 - Off the Record: AI in Drug Dev (SF)

Friday, Jan. 16 - AI x Bio Mixer (Tamarind + Owlposting) (SF)