cystyr-platform
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CatenaBio
CatenaBio is a UC Berkeley spinout building a next-generation bioconjugation platform for targeted cancer therapies. Its proprietary CysTyr platform uses an engineered enzyme, Catenase, to forge a site-specific bond between cysteine and tyrosine residues (the C-Y Bond) using only native amino acids. This lets the company attach multiple different drug payloads to a single antibody, producing Multi-Payload Conjugates (MPCs) designed to overcome tumor resistance where conventional single-payload ADCs fall short.
Marco Lobba
Marco Lobba is a chemist turned CEO who co-founded CatenaBio (Catena Biosciences), a UC Berkeley spinout building a new way to staple proteins together. Trained in the labs of Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna and chemist Matthew Francis, he turned a graduate-school enzyme trick into the CysTyr platform, where an engineered enzyme called Catenase forges a durable tyrosine-cysteine bond - the C-Y Bond - to assemble multi-payload conjugates that single-molecule chemistry could not. He was named to the San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 in 2025.