May 2026

Table of Contents:

• Xylo Bio 📊 🎙 📆
• TwoStep Therapeutics 🎙 🧑‍🦱 👤 👤
• TerraNova Bio 👋
• Ridge Bio 🏆 🎙 📆
• Pumpkinseed 💰
• Progenic Genomics 🎙 📊 🔎
• Perception Medicine 👋 🤝 📔
• Parallel Health 🎙 🏆 🎁
• Nextnet ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ 📈
• Moonlight AI 💰
• Illuminant Surgical 🗞️
• GreenStone Bio 🤝 📔 🤝 📆
• Genesis Molecular AI 🎙 👤
• Deck Bio 👋 🎙
• Cephla 👤 📆 🧑‍🦱
• Aperture Therapeutics 🏆
• AGEMICA 📔 📊 🏆 📊 💰

Xylo Bio [Seed, Neuro Tx]

📊 Getting closer to beginning FIH trials for XYL-1001, having met several key clinical development milestones

🎙 Dr. Sam Banister will be presenting at the ASPET conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 17-20

📆 Co-founders Joshua Ismin (CEO) and Dr. Sam Banister (CSO) participated in the Endless Frontiers Program Event in NYC May 5-8

TwoStep Therapeutics [Seed, Therapeutics]

🎙 CEO Caitlyn Miller will be presenting at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe Summit (May 27-29, 2026)

🧑‍🦱 Kayla Luna joins TwoStep as Executive Assistant

👤 HIRING: Opened a new job posting for CMC (Director or VP)

👤 HIRING: Opened a new job posting for Chief Medical Officer

TerraNova Bio [Inception, Climate Tech]

👋 Selected for SkyDeck Pad-13 Program at UC Berkeley

Ridge Bio [Seed, Enzyme and Therapeutic Design]

🏆 Ridge Bio won the 2026 Rising Star Award at SynBioBeta for developing its novel experiment-informed AI platform for enzyme and targeted drug design, enabling the precise construction of advanced therapeutics with improved drug properties.

🎙 At SynBioBeta, Weston joined the "Rewriting Enzyme Performance: Next-Gen Platforms for AI-Driven Protein Screening" panel, discussing the importance of combining AI protein design with large proprietary datasets generated with high-throughput experimentation.

📆 The Ridge Bio team will be at BIO 2026 in June, meeting with pharma, biotech, and CDMO partners to discuss their NativeLink™-AXC precision bioconjugation enzyme, ProTrigger™ linker systems, and enzyme-based Catalytic Medicines. Find Ridge on the BIO partnering platform or reach out via the website or [email protected].

Pumpkinseed [Seed, Proteomics]

💰 Pumpkinseed announced their Series A. You can read the full release and Axios posts here.

Progenic Genomics [Pre-seed, Reproductive Genomics]

🎙 Founder Brad Gulko will present at the 2026 Reproductive Frontiers Summit in Berkeley in June

📊 Completed 2026 Polygenic disease pleiotropy analysis with team from UC Berkeley

🔎 Seeking partner fertility clinics for pilot of V2 product — reach out to founder Brad Gulko

Perception Medicine [Pre-seed, AI Spatial Biology]

👋 Came out of stealth

🤝 Working with multiple pharma companies to bring AI-powered spatial biology into drug development

📔 Tech was recently published in Nature Medicine

Parallel Health [Seed, Consumer Health]

🎙 Presented at American Association of Dermatology on Advancements in Skin Microbiome and Precision Health

🏆 Selected as a Finalist at Startup World Cup Silicon Valley 2026

🎁 Use code BIO20ENTREPRENEUR for 20% off your first order, or email [email protected] to check insurance eligibility

Nextnet [Seed, Research Software]

⚡ Preparing to launch large-scale clinical trial ontology designed to augment complex clinical development and translational research workflows

⚡ Launched OaaP/OaaS platform enabling life sciences organizations to semantically unify private enterprise data sources with proprietary biomedical ontology for contextual querying

⚡ Released new copilot agentic mode with specialty AI agents that reason over domain-specific semantic web to produce professional scientific deliverables

📈 Expanded deployments across life sciences value chain from CMC manufacturing optimization to supply chain modeling, helping organizations preserve institutional knowledge

Moonlight AI [Seed, Diagnostics]

💰 Raised $3.3M seed round to transform hematology labs with AI-powered diagnostics

Illuminant Surgical [Seed, MedTech]

🗞️ Featured in Forbes Exclusive coverage highlighting their precision access visualization technology for spinal surgery applications.

GreenStone Bio [A, Drug Disc. Tools + Therapeutics]

🤝 Celebrated fourth year as continuous sponsor of the Stanford Drug Discovery Symposium, reinforcing deep roots in the Stanford, UCSF, and Berkeley research corridor

📔 Published high-impact 2026 research in Science, Cell and Advanced Science, showcasing human-relevant models to replace animal testing with translational fidelity for regulators

🤝 Forged deep technical partnerships with Nvidia for AI model development and Illumina for genomics to scale their precision medicine platform

📆 Expanded global scientific footprint with key participations at the MPS World Summit and ISSCR Annual Meeting, setting the standard for human-centric drug discovery

Genesis Molecular AI [B, AI + Tx]

🎙 ML Research Scientist Nate Gruver presented at the inaugural Cofolding Summit in Barcelona - details here

👤 HIRING: for many roles, including ML research scientist and ML research engineer. See all open roles at genesis.ml/careers

Deck Bio [Seed, Therapeutics]

👋 Emerged from stealth in April with the launch of a multi-pMHC targeted T cell engager platform designed to address tumor heterogeneity, antigen escape, and limited target availability in solid tumors

🎙 Presented preclinical data at AACR 2026 for lead program DBXO-1, highlighting Deck Bio's integrated platform technologies: dbTv™ (stabilized TCR engineering), dbTCE™ (developable T cell engager format), and dbSCOPE™ (sequence-agnostic specificity profiling)

Cephla [Pre-seed, Discovery + Global Health Tool]

👤 HIRING: Offering 3 summer intern positions including Hardware Engineering, Technical Staff (Smart Microscopy), and Research Engineer roles at the intersection of AI, robotics, and biology — apply at https://www.cephla.com/careers

📆 Heading to MPS World Summit in Washington, DC May 26–29 following successful connections at NextGen Omics and AACR

🧑‍🦱 Welcomed Spencer as Senior Field Application Scientist to help customers maximize their Squid systems across imaging and life sciences workflows

Aperture Therapeutics [Seed, Therapeutics]

🏆 Won the Longitude Prize on ALS Discovery Award with Harvard Medical School and Tufts University to use innovative AI/ML for mining the world's largest ALS patient datasets and identify key protective disease modifiers that drive neuronal resilience

AGEMICA [A (Raising), Aging Vaccine: Oncology therapeutics / immuno-oncology]

📔 Filed patents covering key aspects of their AI-discovered combination therapy approach and multi-epitope vaccine design work

📊 Lead therapeutic combinations showed up to 100% cancer cell killing in human tumor-derived ex vivo testing with efficacy signals across ~13+ cancer types while sparing healthy control cells

🏆 AGEMICA has entered the XPRIZE finals with more details available on request

📊 Pan-cancer vaccine program is entering humanized mouse studies as the next major in vivo milestone

💰 Now raising Series A to fund humanized mouse studies through IND-enabling work and first-in-human readiness