November 2025: Outperforming AlphaFold(!), emergence of two stealth companies, and pre-prints
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 ecosystem.
Here's what's happening in November 2025:
This Month's Companies
Abalone Bio [Seed, Therapeutics]
Excited to announce a multi-million dollar collaboration with Sihuan Pharma to develop next-gen obesity drugs
In vivo validation of early hits for their internal obesity program, demonstrating weight loss and reduced food intake with longer half-life and fewer side effects than peptide drugs
Adaptyx Bio [Seed, Med Device]
Came out of stealth, releasing a new website and announcing its $14M Seed round
Cache DNA [Pre-Series A, Life Sciences Tools/Laboratory Infrastructure]
Publications: Cache has been working hard with collaborators at Stanford (Undiagnosed Disease Network with Dr. Euan Ashley), Baylor, Scott & White, and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to evaluate its ambient molecular preservation solutions.
Award: Cache was selected as one of 18 companies worldwide for an Innovation AveNEW award ahead of the SLAS2026 International Conference and Exhibition.
Fundraising: Cache has space for angels, family offices, and other DeepTech investors in its latest round. Reach out to [email protected] for more information if you are interested in participating.
Curve Biosciences [A, Monitoring]
Emerged to bring Whole-Body Intelligence to chronic diseases, having raised $40M
DropXcell [Pre-Seed, Drug Disc. Tech + Services]
Looking to talk to early stage founders and biotechs interested in discovering antibodies against their targets. They are especially interested in helping founders who have not yet raised institutional capital and who do not have money to use traditional costly discovery methods.
CEO and founder Luke Blauch co-hosted San Francisco’s first VC Village on 10/21, bringing 40+ investors together to connect and share deal flow. Reach out to be included in the next event.
Genesis Molecular AI [B, AI + Therapeutics]
Unveiled Pearl, a Field-Leading Foundation Model that outperforms frontier models, including AlphaFold 3, on key benchmarks that predict utility in real-world drug discovery
Blog post with more detail
Collaboration with NVIDIA is accelerating Pearl training and inference, including NVIDIA cuEquivariance kernels to enable deployment at industrial scale
Updated its name from Genesis Therapeutics to Genesis Molecular AI, reflecting the company’s long-standing mission at the intersection of unmet medical need and AI
Illuminant Surgical [Seed, MedTech]
Hired the company's first Clinical Engineer, who will be responsible for coordinating their cadaver and clinical studies across multiple indications
Chosen to present at the 2025 MDIC Medical Extended Reality Summit, the premier conference for industry and regulatory collaboration in the space. They’re presenting on approaches to cybersecurity and their use of projective displays for precision access.
N1 Life [Pre-A, Drug Delivery Tech]
Registers First-in-Class Peptide Penetration Enhancer with FDA, Enabling Next-Generation Transdermal Drug Development
Announced that it has registered a Drug Master File (DMF) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its proprietary penetration-enhancing peptides, MetaTide. This first-in-class peptide technology represents a significant advancement in transdermal and local drug delivery, offering pharmaceutical companies a novel solution to enhance drug penetration through biological barriers.
With the DMF now registered, N1 Life is actively seeking partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies interested in incorporating this permeation-enhancing technology into their drug development programs. The company offers collaborative development support, technical consultation, and flexible commercial arrangements.
First-in-class Peptide Penetration Enhancer Receives International INCI Name, Opening Global Pathways for Cosmetic Application
Announced that its proprietary MetaTide peptide penetration enhancer series and Finatide anti-hair loss and growth peptide series have been officially approved by the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) and included in the International Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary and Handbook. This achievement grants the technology an official International Nomenclature Cosmetic Ingredient (INCI) name — laying a solid foundation for its entry into major global markets, including the U.S., EU, and Asia.
Already established partnerships with three of the world’s top skincare companies, and continues to seek collaborations with:
Premium skincare brands aiming for science-driven differentiation
K-Beauty and J-Beauty leaders pioneering functional cosmetic innovation
Professional and medical skincare brands requiring clinically validated actives
OEM/ODM manufacturers seeking advanced formulation technologies
Emerging beauty brands developing products around novel active ingredients
Raw material suppliers exploring co-development and strategic technology alliances
They offer flexible partnership models, including ingredient supply, joint R&D, and exclusive licensing by category or region.
With both INCI registration (cosmetic use) and FDA Drug Master File (pharmaceutical use) established, N1 Life uniquely bridges the beauty and pharmaceutical industries through a unified core technology platform — serving both health and aesthetic needs.
“We’re not choosing between cosmetics and medicine — we’re advancing both in parallel,” explained N1 Life CEO, Dr. Zang.
Contact: Business Partnerships: [email protected] Official Website: www.n1life.co
Nextnet [Seed, Research Software]
Data Alliance Partnerships
In their pursuit of becoming the “Spotify for Trustworthy High Quality Scientific Evidence” -- making high-quality, peer-reviewed life sciences data easily accessible through Explorer, Copilot, and upcoming modules, they’re deepening collaborations with leading proprietary data vendors
These partnerships will unlock premium, paywalled scientific content for our users, delivering high-value insights within the Nextnet subscription ecosystem while expanding our distribution reach and strengthening our competitive moat
Finalizing a revenue-share partnership with the world's largest reagents data provider, enabling co-selling opportunities to their customers -- including several of Europe’s top 10 pharma companies.
Growth Team
Their commercial team across the US and EU continues to scale with new SDRs, BDRs, Account Executives, and Managers driving pipeline growth and customer engagement. Expect more exciting updates on their go-to-market expansion in next month’s issue
Product Updates
Rolled out major performance upgrades to both the Explorer and Copilot modules within Nextnet AI, enhancing relevance of scientific response, sources and user experience.
Portal Bio [Seed, Cell Engineering Platform]
CEO and Co-Founder Armon Sharei, PhD sits down with Peter White, SQZ RBC Trial Participant and Complete Responder. Listen to Peter's story on how the engineered cell therapy that Armon and his team developed during their time at SQZ Biotech changed his disease trajectory
PyrAmes [A, Commercial-stage Med Device]
Continues to build its customer base, with several leading Level IV NICUs adopting Boppli® for clinical use. Boppli is PyrAmes' groundbreaking (wearable, noninvasive, continuous) blood pressure monitoring solution for infants under critical care
Conducted several successful pilot evaluations over the past two months, potentially leading to clinical adoption.
Ridge Bio [Seed, Enzyme and Therapeutic Design]
Released a new technical brief on their first enzyme product developed using their experiment-informed AI platform. Nativelink-AXC enables the development of next generation antibody conjugates like ADCs, AOCs, Radioimmunotherapy, and targeted LNPs without any changes to the antibody sequence, glycan, or disulfides while yielding a more stable and homogeneous product than traditional methods.
TwoStep Therapeutics [Seed, Therapeutics]
Will be presenting a poster at SITC 2025 on November 8th, recognized among the Top 15% of abstracts submitted.
Velocity Bio [Seed, Therapeutics]
In collaboration with the Fordyce Lab at Stanford University, published a bioRxiv preprint describing a novel fluorescence imaging system that accurately characterizes rapid kinetic processes within microfluidic chips over an extremely large field of view.
Ali Lashkaripour, Co-founder and CTO, will be attending the Lab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics World Congress in Laguna Hills, CA (November 17–19).
Xylo Bio [Seed, Neuro Tx]
On track for their first-in-human trial for mid next year and have initiated selection for clinical CROs and clinical study units.
Director of Business Development, Samantha Tabone, is available for coffee meetings in San Francisco.
Co-founders, Josh Ismin and Dr. Sam Banister, will be visiting New York in December for a partnership event at NYU.
Where you can find me this month:
Thursday, Nov. 6th: CLS Pantheon Awards (SF)
Wednesday, Nov. 12th: Phase Capital Frontiers Popup (SF)
