biocatalysis
(3)
Pando Bioscience
Pando Bioscience is an AI-driven synthetic biology company that engineers better enzymes for the pharmaceutical and diagnostics industries. It pairs a generative-AI design model with an ultra-high-throughput 'one-pot' screening platform that tests roughly 1,000 times more enzyme variants - about 75% faster and 80% cheaper than conventional methods - compressing the design-build-test-learn cycle to about one month. Founded in 2022 by former Ginkgo Bioworks scientists Will Cao and Yang Wang, Pando both improves customers' enzymes and builds its own proprietary enzyme assets, such as the Saiyan-Phi29 polymerase.
Aralez Bio
Aralez Bio is a Berkeley, California biotechnology company that uses engineered enzymes and directed evolution to manufacture noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) - the specialized building blocks used in peptide drugs and other pharmaceuticals. Spun out of Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold's Caltech lab in 2019, the company runs biocatalytic reactions that produce enantiopure ncAAs in a single step with water as the main byproduct, expanding the amino acid toolbox roughly 1,000-fold. Aralez sells a catalog of thousands of exclusive amino acids and offers custom synthesis and ton-scale production for pharmaceutical customers, including partners among the world's largest drug companies.
Ridge Bio
Ridge Biotechnologies is a Bay Area startup using AI-driven enzyme and targeted drug design to build the next generation of precision medicines. Its platform pairs proprietary machine learning models with high-throughput, cell-free wet-lab experimentation to design enzymes and delivery systems for applications spanning antibody-drug conjugates, in vivo CAR-T, targeted nucleic acid delivery, biocatalysis and radiotherapies. The company emerged from stealth in September 2025 with an oversubscribed $25 million seed round led by Sutter Hill Ventures.