Hey, this is Michael from The Bioentrepreneurs: Stanford. Each month, I bring you key updates and exclusive insights straight from the teams driving innovation across Stanford's life sciences ecosystem. Here's what's happening in March 2025:
This Month's Companies
Adaptyx Biosciences
Published letter in JACC: Basic to Translational Science “Continuous Molecular Monitoring for Precision Heart Failure Care”
Won shark tank event for applying their real-time biosensing technology for the management of heart failure at the THT(Technology and Heart Failure Therapeutics) Conference
Curve Biosciences
Awarded $11M non-dilutive grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to fund pivotal study of liver cancer detection in patients with liver cirrhosis
Fauna Bio
Announced Faun1083 as its first development candidate. Faun1083 is a potential first-in-class therapeutic targeting heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), with plans to advance into the clinic in 2026
Genesis Therapeutics
Announced a strategic collaboration with pharmaceutical company Incyte, which will utilize AI to unlock the discovery of breakthrough small molecule medicines
Will collaborate with Incyte on two initial targets, and Genesis will receive an upfront payment of $30 million. Genesis is also eligible for up to $295 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments per target
“AI has the potential to redefine how we discover small molecule medicines, and our team is at the forefront of this revolution” said Evan Feinberg, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Genesis. “We are pleased to establish this world-class partnership to combine our GEMS AI platform with Incyte’s deep expertise and track record in drug discovery and development, with the shared goal of advancing critical treatments for patients with severe diseases.”
Expanded its senior leadership team and Board of Directors including the appointment of Shifeng Pan, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer; Alla Ivannova as Senior Vice President of Engineering; and Paul A. Friedman, M.D., as Chairman of the Board
Illuminant Surgical
Kicking off live demos & user studies – Skylight is undergoing testing for its spine surgery indication, with upcoming animal studies in collaboration with the Co-Directors of Spine Surgery at USC
Hired for commercialization – Welcomed a new Quality Manager from J&J Monarch / Auris to strengthen QA/RA efforts
Seeking strategic partnerships – Actively exploring collaborations with innovative spine instrument manufacturers and endoscopic spine surgery companies
Whitepaper dropping soon – Stay tuned for an in-depth look at the transformative potential of anatomical projection in surgery
Parallel Health
Published paper & on cover of the Dermatologist: "Dermatologist Disruptors: Next-Generation Skin Microbiome Testing and Bacteriophage Therapy"
Featured in WWD article: "Parallel Health Could Revolutionize Precision Medicine, Starting with Skin"
Launched "Botox in a jar, but better" – Blue Biotic™ Multi-Effect Peptide Cream for skin longevity and anti-aging, boasting 34 actives to improve wrinkles by 63% within 28 days
Launched MD-03™ Odor Discovery Testing, Scalp Health Testing with Custom Phage Therapy to address body odor, dandruff, and hair loss
Prose Foods
Published patent on methods to predict the food functionality of disordered proteins
Uncovered a naturally-occurring protein (in a "forgotten" ancient grain) that offers the rise, stretch, and chew of gluten in bakery products, without the allergenicity
Piloted manufacturing process in industrial facilities
Debuted consumer brand, Lomme, ahead of 2025 launch
Velocity Bio
Welcomed its 4th team member, Dan Tudorica, to the team! Dan brings a wealth of expertise in protein biophysics and early drug discovery. He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley, where he performed structure-function studies on autophagy regulators and their relationship with Parkinson’s Disease. Later, Dan spearheaded efforts to develop therapeutics for novel targets.
Applied its QUIKER platform to characterize a disease relevant enzyme target, discovering novel potential allosteric sites and validating the approach with known sites
Velocity recently demonstrated integrated target expression, purification, and selection assays yielding small-molecule binding site localization on the DASH platform
On-chip Enzyme Turnover
Velocity Bio performs quantitative enzyme assays at a massive scale through miniaturization and parallelization. This animation shows about 8% of the chambers single microfluidic device, each chamber containing a single enzyme variant and capable of performing many biochemical assays. Different rates of increasing brightness in different chambers reflects particular mutational effects on enzyme activity.
Microfluidic Valve Actuation
Velocity Bio designs and leverages microfluidic devices with integrated microscopic valving to control fluid flow within a microfluidic chip. Valve states are computer controlled to “program” and automate massively parallelized biochemical experiments.
