Kauffman Fellows is a world-wide network of innovation investors who provide smart, connected capital to fuel entrepreneurial change.

Kauffman Fellows

Techammer is an angel investor who helps founders solve important problems. Designers invest in data science, digital health, and companies that accelerate science. Companies that improve the lives of ordinary Americans pique our interest. The designers are both Midwesterners (Jeff from Michigan/Indiana and Halle from Ohio), and we both started our careers bagging groceries. Designers met in San Francisco, where we both lived for three months. The designers got married in Italy and just moved to the East Coast.

Techammer

Propel(x) is an angel investing platform focused on funding early-stage companies that are built around scientific discovery.  The company is driven by a mission to help propel mankind by enabling investments in technologies that matter.  Propel(x) was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Propel(X)

Social Capital is a Menlo Park-based investment firm whose mission is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. By harnessing technology to address core human needs, they aim to drive a bottom-up redistribution of power, capital and opportunity. To achieve this, they're building a new kind of company and a platform for empowering brilliant entrepreneurs and breakthrough products. Founded in 2011, the company is based in Menlo Park, California, United States.

Social Capital

Social Impact Capital specializes in investments that can deliver top decile returns. In addition to a positive social impact, the company focuses on the ''essentials of human need energy, water, food, health, environment, education, housing, access to capital, and social justice.

Social Impact Capital

OODA helps our clients identify, manage, and respond to global risks and uncertainties while exploring emerging opportunities and developing robust and adaptive strategies for the future.  We are a global strategic advisory firm with deep DNA in global security, technology, and intelligence issues. Expert support for Mergers and Acquisition activity, growth and strategy initiatives, market engagement, and board/governance issues. Cybersecurity and technology risk management support through our EVALU8 methodology or with bespoke red teaming, CXO-as-a-service, and AI Integrity services. We investigate, qualify, and understand emerging opportunities, technologies, and risks with both industry and bespoke research. OODA operates the OODA Network provides actionable intelligence, analysis, and insight on global security, technology, and business issues. The OODA Network is comprised of over 300 executives, experts, and analysts all focused on making decisions in an environment when disruption, conflict, and opportunity simultaneously exist.

OODA

We are firm believers in the notion that trends and opportunities can be identified with thoughtful analysis and judgments about the future. We study and look to understand the environmental, technological, scientific, and geopolitical factors that will impact the future as well as the gray area phenomena on the fringe that could present unexpected challenges or opportunities. The DEV Capital investment methodology applies deep tech domain expertise, geopolitical intelligence, and quantitative and qualitative analysis. DEV Capital focuses investments in four distinct areas; venture capital, public markets, private markets, and blockchain/crypto.

DEV Capital

Bioverge is a venture capital firm specializing in emerging healthcare startups. The firm operates an investment platform that aims to democratize access to startups solving healthcare’s biggest challenges and accelerating their progress.

Bioverge

Ligandal

Ligandal's mission is to create precision delivery platform to cure and treat disease. We are driving the discovery and delivery of a broad array of gene therapies, genetic materials, and gene-specific payloads with unprecedented precision at the cellular and sub-cellular level. Our ligand discovery engine allows for rapid design of diagnostically-responsive materials, capable of shuttling a variety of nucleic acid and protein payloads (including CRISPR and mRNA) to specific cell types. We are initially applying this technology to indications in hematology, immuno-oncology, and infectious disease.

Ligandal develops novel in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) delivery technologies based on ligandals—biomolecules that stick to other biomolecules—for gene therapy, gene editing, and regenerative medicine, by leveraging technologies such as nanotechnology, machine learning, and computational biology. The company’s approach entails creating a peptide-based material to mediate delivery of CRISPR, DNA, messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA), and other genetic tools into the cell to treat diseases.

Reinventing gene therapies with next-generation technologies

Human Gene Editing

Ligandal Inc. Appoints Tushar Nuwal as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer

<div>
 
 Ligandal develops novel in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) delivery technologies based on ligandals&mdash;biomolecules that stick to other biomolecules&mdash;for gene therapy, gene editing, and regenerative medicine, by leveraging technologies such as nanotechnology, machine learning, and computational biology. The company&rsquo;s approach entails creating a peptide-based material to mediate delivery of CRISPR, DNA, messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA), and other genetic tools into the cell to treat diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s materials used for delivery are directly derived from proteins that can be customized according to any targeted cell (receptors) and payload size. In addition to targeting therapeutic areas such as immunology and hematology, it plans to address aging diseases. It has also developed a pandemic mitigation platform dubbed SARS-BLOCK that focuses on the Covid-19 virus.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Ligandal partnered with 
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220622005542/en/Ligandal-Partners-With-Nanotronics-to-Solidify-Optimization-and-Quality-in-Personalized-Genomic-Medicine-Delivery-Systems">
 Nanotronics
 </a>
 in June 2022 to establish modular fabrication facilities for nanotechnology and production of nanomaterials.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In February 2019, Ligandal raised USD 1.8 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds raised to USD 4.6 million.&nbsp;
 
</div>

Ligandal develops novel in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) delivery technologies based on ligandals—biomolecules that stick to other biomolecules—for gene therapy, gene editing, and regenerative medicine, by leveraging technologies such as nanotechnology, machine learning, and computational biology. The company’s approach entails creating a peptide-based material to mediate delivery of CRISPR, DNA, messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA), and other genetic tools into the cell to treat diseases.The company’s materials used for delivery are directly derived from proteins that can be customized according to any targeted cell (receptors) and payload size. In addition to targeting therapeutic areas such as immunology and hematology, it plans to address aging diseases. It has also developed a pandemic mitigation platform dubbed SARS-BLOCK that focuses on the Covid-19 virus.Key customers and partnershipsLigandal partnered with <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220622005542/en/Ligandal-Partners-With-Nanotronics-to-Solidify-Optimization-and-Quality-in-Personalized-Genomic-Medicine-Delivery-Systems">Nanotronics </a>in June 2022 to establish modular fabrication facilities for nanotechnology and production of nanomaterials.Funding and financialsIn February 2019, Ligandal raised USD 1.8 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds raised to USD 4.6 million.

<div>
 
 Editas Medicine specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of areas including oncology, ocular diseases, and blood diseases. It leverages the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology, specifically Cas9 and Cas12a enzymes.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company develops both in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) and ex vivo (gene editing done in a specialized laboratory and returned to the body) therapeutics. As of March 2024, Editas has seven gene editing programs in its pipeline.&nbsp;
 
 
 One of the company&rsquo;s candidates was in the late clinical trial stages as of March 2024. The Phase I/II clinical trials on Editas&rsquo; in vivo gene editing therapy EDIT-101 have been ongoing since 2019 and the company announced that it had achieved proof of concept and identified a responder population in November 2022. For the first time ever (in April 2022), the company delivered its experimental in vivo CRISPR therapy to a 
 <a href="https://ir.editasmedicine.com/news-releases/news-release-details/editas-medicine-announces-dosing-first-pediatric-patient">
 pediatric patient
 </a>
 to treat Leber congenital amaurosis 10 (LCA10), an inherited early childhood eye disease. Its ex vivo gene editing therapy EDIT-301 holds two rare pediatric disease designations granted by the FDA for transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The candidate also received 
 <a href="https://ir.editasmedicine.com/news-releases/news-release-details/editas-medicine-receives-fda-orphan-drug-designation-edit-301">
 orphan drug designation
 </a>
 in May 2022 for beta-thalassemia.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Founded in September 2013, Editas has secured several collaborations with other pharmaceutical and drug developers including 
 <a href="https://www.catalent.com/catalent-news/catalent-enters-into-strategic-partnership-with-editas-medicine-to-support-gene-editing-medicine-pipeline/">
 Catalent
 </a>
 (for therapy development and manufacturing support),
 <a href="https://ir.editasmedicine.com/news-releases/news-release-details/adverum-biotechnologies-and-editas-medicine-announce">
 Adverum Biotechnologies 
 </a>
 (to develop technologies to deliver gene editing medicines to the eye), 
 <a href="https://www.askbio.com/editas-medicine-and-askbio-enter-strategic-research-collaboration-to-explore-in-vivo-delivery-of-genome-editing-medicines-to-treat-neurological-diseases/">
 Asklepios BioPharmaceutical
 </a>
 (AskBio) (to research in vivo gene editing therapies for neurological diseases),
 <a href="https://ir.editasmedicine.com/news-releases/news-release-details/editas-medicine-and-bluerock-therapeutics-enter-strategic">
 BlueRock Therapeutics
 </a>
 (to develop medicines by combining cell therapy and gene editing technologies), and big pharma such as Bristol-Myers Squibb (to develop cell therapies for oncology).&nbsp;
 
 
 The company expanded its partnership with Azzur Cleanrooms on Demand (COD) in July 2023 with regard to continuing to manufacture Editas' candidate EDIT-301. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company last raised funds in June 2023 when the company raised USD 125 million in a common stock offering. Editas Medicine did not disclose what the raised funds would be used for. The company has been listed on the Nasdaq since February 2016 and was the first CRISPR gene editing company to go public. 
 
</div>

Editas Medicine

<div>
 
 CRISPR Therapeutics specializes in developing gene editing-based novel therapeutics for a variety of areas including immuno-oncology and hemoglobinopathies. It leverages the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology, specifically Cas9 enzymes, and focuses predominantly on treating somatic cells that do not transfer DNA to the next generations, preventing future generations from contracting a genetic disease.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company develops both in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) and ex vivo (gene editing done in a specialized laboratory and returned to the body) therapeutics. As of March 2024, the company had 18 drug candidates in its pipeline. 
 
 
 In a milestone event in November 2023, the company&rsquo;s gene-editing therapy exagamglogene autotemcel, CASGEVY 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24093">
 (exa-cel)
 </a>
 , developed with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to treat sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassemia, received the world&rsquo;s first authorization from the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products, Regulatory Agency (MHRA). In December 2023, it received FDA approval for patients aged 12 and older. The drug for beta-thalassemia patients is also nearing its market entry in the US, with the FDA&rsquo;s decision expected on March 30, 2024.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 The company has secured strategic collaborations with several companies to co-develop and co-commercialize gene editing medicines that include 
 <a href="https://investors.vrtx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vertex-pharmaceuticals-and-crispr-therapeutics-amend">
 Vertex Pharmaceuticals
 </a>
 (2015) to develop a therapy (CTX001) for various indications including beta-thalassemia, sickle cell disease, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy; and 
 <a href="https://viacyte.com/press-releases/crispr-therapeutics-and-viacyte-announce-strategic-collaboration-to-develop-gene-edited-stem-cell-derived-therapy-for-diabetes/">
 ViaCyte
 </a>
 (September 2018) to develop VCTX210, a regenerative medicine for diabetes.
 
 
 Big pharma Bayer also signed an option agreement in 2019 with the company to co-develop and co-commercialize two candidates, after entirely handing over the joint venture Casebia Therapeutics to CRISPR.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 Founded in 2013, CRISPR has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2016. For 2021, the company reported a revenue of USD 913.1 million earned via milestone payments, collaborations, and licensing.
 
 
 
 
 
</div>

CRISPR Therapeutics

<div>
 
 Intellia Therapeutics specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for various areas, including immuno-oncology, autoimmune, and genetic diseases. It leverages the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology, specifically Cas9 enzymes.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company develops both in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) and ex vivo (gene editing done in a specialized laboratory and returned to the body) therapeutics. As of March 2024, it was working on 3 internal drug programs and four collaborative programs. As of March 2024, one program was in the late clinical stage, one program was in the early clinical stage, and five were in the research and preclinical stage. The company considers its lipid nanoparticle delivery system to be a key strength in minimizing genotoxicity risk and random insertion.
 
 
 Intellia acquired biotechnology company Rewrite Therapeutics for USD 45 million in February 2022 to leverage its gene editing and DNA-writing technologies. Intellia would also pay up to USD 155 million in additional milestone payments.
 
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Intellia has partnered with a number of biotech and pharma companies, including: 
 1) Big pharma Novartis (January 2015), to research and co-develop CRISPR/Cas9-edited therapies to develop an ex-vivo treatment for sickle-cell disease and a number of undisclosed programs 
 2) Kyverna Therapeutics (January 2022), for the development of a next-generation CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for autoimmune diseases 
 3) ONK Therapeutics (February 2022), to develop engineered natural killer (NK) cell therapies for cancer treatment.&nbsp;
 
 
 In October 2023, the company expanded its research collaboration with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22377">
 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
 </a>
 (entered in April 2020) to develop gene-editing therapies for neurological and muscular diseases.
 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Founded by Caribou Biosciences and Atlas Ventures in November 2014, Intellia has been listed on Nasdaq since May 2016. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15140">
 November 2022
 </a>
 , the company raised USD 300 million via an underwritten public offering&mdash;it did not disclose the purpose of the financing. For 2022, the company reported a revenue of ~USD 52&nbsp; million, earned through collaborations.
 
</div>

Intellia Therapeutics

<div>
 
 Based in the US and France, Cellectis develops off-the-shelf gene editing cancer immunotherapies based on allogeneic Chimeric Antigen Receptors T (CAR-T) cells dubbed UCARTs by leveraging the transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN) technology.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company had seven therapeutics in development; two targeting Leukemia, one for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, one for Large B Cell Lymphoma, two for Multiple Myelnoma, and one for Renal Cell Carcinoma. Its Leukemia therapeutics were in Phase I of clinical trials, while its non-Hodgkin lymphoma solution was just entering Phase I of clinical trials. The company's therapeutics for Multiple Myeloma, another for Lymphoma, and Renal Cell Carcinoma, had been licensed out to other pharmaceutical companies.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23389">
 November 2023
 </a>
 , Cellectis entered into a partnership with AstraZeneca to accelerate the development of gene editing therapeutics, with a focus on oncology, immunology, and rare diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 Cellectis also partnered with Primera in January 2023 to develop in-vivo gene therapies for mitochondrial disease. Through the partnership, both entities would collaborate to genetically edit mutations in mitochondrial DNA and develop an engineering toolbox that can be used to develop therapeutics for mitochondrial diseases. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company entered into several strategic collaboration agreements with AstraZeneca in November 2023. These agreements included an investment agreement relating to an initial equity investment of USD 80 million by subscribing for 16 million ordinary shares. Cellectis stated that it planned to use the proceeds received to develop gene editing tools, for research and development expenses incurred in developing its programs, and other general corporate purposes.
 
 
 
</div>

Cellectis

Caribou Biosciences specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for hematologic oncology indications using the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology. It develops allogeneic off-the-shelf gene edited therapies based on Chimeric Antigen Receptors T (CAR-T) cells and CAR Natural Killer (CAR-NK) cells.The company leverages its proprietary platform CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA (chRDNA), which uses hybrid guides—both ribonucleic acid (RNA) and DNA nucleotides—to edit DNA. As of March 2024, Caribou had four candidates in its clinical pipeline, of which its lead candidate CB-010, a CAR-T therapy to treat relapsed/refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, was in the Phase I clinical trial stage (March 2024). Its other CAR-T candidates, CB-011 for the treatment of relapsed/refractory Multiple Myeloma and CB-012, for the treatment of relapsed/refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia, were also in Phase I of clinical trials. Its alternate application for CB-010 to treat autoimmune diseases was still in the discovery stage.The company intended to extend ex vivo (gene editing done in a specialized laboratory and returned to the body) therapies toward other indications outside oncology and implement its Cas12a chRDNA platform in in vivo (gene editing done inside the body) applications.Key customers and partnershipsThe company entered into a partnership with big pharma company <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/news/press-releases/abbvie-and-caribou-biosciences-announce-collaboration-and-license-agreement-for-car-t-cell-products.htm">Abbvie </a>in February 2021 for licensing and co-development of two CAR-T therapies. Caribou also entered into licensing agreements with <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201118005128/en/Caribou-Biosciences-Announces-Licensing-Agreement-for-scFvs-Targeting-CD371-to-Enable-Development-of-Allogeneic-Cell-Therapies">Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center </a>(MSKCC) (November 2020), Corteva Agriscience, and Intellia Therapeutics. It also has a sales and assignment agreement with ProMab Biotechnologies Inc. (February 2020).Funding and financialsCaribou Biosciences went public on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in July 2021 and raised USD 304 million. The IPO proceeds were earmarked to fuel the company’s clinical development. For 2021, it recorded revenue of USD 9.6 million earned through licensing and collaborations.The company last raised funding in July 2023, when it raised USD 125 million in an upsized underwritten public offering. Caribou did not disclose what the funds would be used for.

Caribou Biosciences

Companies that develop novel therapeutics based on the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology

Companies that develop novel therapeutics based on other types of gene editing technologies including TALEN and ZFN

Companies that develop systems that enable the diagnosis of gene-edited therapies. Also includes systems that deliver gene-editing components into the human body

Companies that offer their gene-editing platforms to other pharma companies to develop therapeutics

Companies that offer support services to gene-editing companies, which include genomic research companies, gene-editing component manufacturing, and designing tools

Startups in the hub develop gene-editing treatments to cater to specific patients and patient profiles

Genomics enables precise changes in the DNA sequence of living organisms to develop treatments

Ligandal

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