drug-delivery
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Cambridge Design Partnership gets past “almost works”
A prototype can impress a room and still be impossible to manufacture. Cambridge Design Partnership has built a business in that awkward gap, fixing everything from diagnostic instruments to the feel of a kitchen knife.
Five Engineers, Twenty-Five Pounds and a Workshop for Medicine
Team Consulting nearly disappeared before it found its lane. Four decades later, its employee-owners build the unglamorous machinery behind better injections, longer-lived transplant organs and an ear clinic that fits in a hand.
Deborah Bitterfield Is Taking the Water Out of Biologics - and the Waiting Room Out of the Day
A Duke materials scientist turned one stubborn laboratory technique into a biotech company, a Novartis collaboration, and a practical lesson in building around the minutes people want back.
Craig Chambliss Spent 30 Years Learning How a Drug Becomes a Company
Before Neurelis had a commercial product, Craig Chambliss had already learned the industry from the sales call to the acquisition table. His career is a study in patient capital, practical company-building and the unglamorous middle where science becomes infrastructure.
Ahmet Tutuncu Has Spent 30 Years Fixing the Last Inch of Medicine
A physician-scientist turned three-time respiratory founder, Ahmet Tutuncu keeps returning to an unfashionable question: what good is a sophisticated drug if its delivery device gets in the way?
The $85 Million Bet That a DNA Scaffold Can Make Gene Therapy Re-Dosable
Code Biotherapeutics is trying to turn DNA into the FedEx network for genetic medicine. Its modular 3DNA scaffold promises bigger payloads, precise addresses and repeat delivery - but the public evidence is still preclinical.
Neurelis Put an Old Seizure Drug in the Nose - and Built a $300 Million Business Around the Hard Part
The medicine was familiar. The delivery problem was not. Neurelis spent more than a decade making diazepam work as a practical nasal rescue treatment - then showed how a narrow patient problem can become a platform, a pipeline and a profitable commercial company.
The Duke Spinout Teaching Billion-Dollar Drugs to Fit Inside a Needle
Deborah Bitterfield raised about $8 million over seven years to prove that a protein could be dried into microbeads and shot through a needle. Then Novartis signed a deal worth up to nearly $1 billion.
Suchul Jang
He spent a decade engineering tiny vesicles to smuggle drugs where they were needed. Now he is running the American arm of a Korean biotech that wants the brain to clean up after itself - quietly, without the inflammation that has shadowed Alzheimer's drugs for years.
Ankyra Therapeutics
Ankyra Therapeutics is a clinical-stage Boston biotech developing anchored immunotherapy - a platform that physically tethers potent immune-modulating drugs to aluminum hydroxide so they stay concentrated inside a tumor rather than spreading through the body. Its lead candidate, tolododekin alfa (ANK-101), anchors the powerful cytokine IL-12 in the tumor microenvironment, aiming to unlock IL-12's anti-tumor activity while avoiding the systemic toxicity that has historically limited it. Founded in 2019 out of MIT science and led by CEO Howard L. Kaufman, the company is running Phase 1/1b trials in advanced solid tumors, including combinations with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Fount Bio, Inc.
Fount Bio is a Somerville, Massachusetts life-science company that builds long-lasting hyaluronic acid (HA) matrices directly inside living tissue. Its proprietary Flī-HA platform uses Nobel-Prize-winning bioorthogonal (click) chemistry to deliver HA building blocks that self-assemble in situ into a biostable, high-molecular-weight matrix - overcoming the delivery and degradation barriers that have long forced HA to be injected as pre-formed filler. The lead product, Flī-Derm, is a needle-free liquid for aesthetic dermatology that reduced fine lines and wrinkles in a blinded clinical study and won IMCAS 2024's Innovation of the Year. The tunable platform extends toward ophthalmology, joints, mucosal tissue and women's health.
Mosanna Therapeutics
Mosanna Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech developing MOS118, a bedtime nasal spray for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Rather than mechanically forcing the airway open like CPAP, MOS118 is a small molecule pan-K+ channel inhibitor that reactivates the body's own negative pressure reflex - stimulating pressure-sensing nerves in the nasopharynx to increase upper airway muscle tone and reduce apnea episodes. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Redwood City, California with an office in Basel, Switzerland, the company launched publicly in June 2025 with an $80 million Series A to advance MOS118 through Phase 2.
Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Neurotech Pharmaceuticals is a Cumberland, Rhode Island biotechnology company that develops long-acting therapies for chronic retinal diseases using its Encapsulated Cell Technology (ECT) platform - a tiny implant of genetically engineered cells that continuously secretes a therapeutic protein inside the eye. In March 2025 its lead product ENCELTO (revakinagene taroretcel-lwey, formerly NT-501/Renexus) became the first and only FDA-approved treatment for macular telangiectasia type 2 (MacTel), delivering ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) to slow the loss of photoreceptors.
Zetagen Therapeutics
Zetagen Therapeutics is a private, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in Syracuse, New York, developing locally-administered therapies for metastatic and primary cancers that spread to bone. Its lead candidate, ZetaMet (Zeta-BC-003), uses a patented molecular pathway delivered by a single outpatient injection to suspend cancer growth, inhibit pain, and regenerate bone in patients with metastatic breast cancer lytic lesions. Spun out of research at SUNY Upstate Medical University in 2015, the company has earned multiple FDA Breakthrough Designations and reported Phase 2a data showing an 87.9% mean reduction in lesion defect volume.
SonoThera
SonoThera is a South San Francisco biotech developing an ultrasound-guided, nonviral platform for delivering genetic medicines. Instead of the viral vectors that dominate gene therapy, it uses focused ultrasound and injectable microbubbles - a process called sonoporation - to open transient pores in target cells and shuttle DNA or RNA payloads into specific organs. The pitch is delivery that is targeted, potentially redosable, and decoupled from the immune and manufacturing headaches of viruses. The company raised a $125M Series B in June 2026 and is pushing lead programs in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and polycystic kidney disease toward the clinic.
Axelyf
Axelyf is a Brookline, Massachusetts biotech (with an R&D subsidiary in Iceland) building next-generation lipid nanoparticle delivery systems for RNA medicines. Founded by former Moderna drug-delivery leaders, it pairs a proprietary AXL ionizable-lipid library with an AI model called ANNA to make RNA and gene-editing payloads reach the right tissue with higher potency and less toxicity. In mouse liver studies its AXL LNPs showed roughly 4-5x higher gene-editing efficiency than the LP-01 clinical benchmark at equivalent doses, without evidence of liver toxicity. The company closed $2.6M in seed funding in August 2025 to push its lead autoimmune program and lipid library toward preclinical and non-human-primate studies.
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.
Flashpoint Therapeutics
Flashpoint Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech spun out of Chad Mirkin's nanotechnology lab at Northwestern University, developing 'structural nanomedicines' - drugs whose potency comes not from new molecules but from how existing therapeutic components are arranged at the nanoscale. By co-delivering RNA, DNA, peptide and CRISPR payloads to individual cells with precise stoichiometry and synchronized activation, the company reports it can turn conventionally ineffective drug components into curative therapies, with early data showing dramatically stronger immune activation and tumor killing. Founded by Adam Margolin and backed by a $10M seed round led by Riyadh-based Beta Lab plus a $50M KAIMRC partnership, Flashpoint is advancing its lead immuno-oncology candidate FLASH-001 through the clinic.
Myris Therapeutics
Myris Therapeutics is a Pittsburgh-based precision oncology company building the next generation of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs). Formerly BioHybrid Solutions, Myris uses proprietary polymer chemistry rooted in Carnegie Mellon's ATRP (atom transfer radical polymerization) technology to grow polymer bottlebrushes on antibodies, achieving ultra-high drug-to-antibody ratios (DAR) of 50-300 - roughly 10 to 100 times higher than conventional ADCs. That capability opens up new chemical space for cancer payloads that were previously unusable, aiming to deliver more potent, precisely targeted therapies.
Adam Margolin
Adam Margolin is a computational biologist turned biotech founder who co-founded Flashpoint Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company engineering spherical-nucleic-acid nanomedicines that aim to turn weak cancer therapies into curative ones. After a 20-year academic career that took him from Wharton and Wall Street to running the #3-ranked genetics department in the country at Mount Sinai, and a stint as a Venture Partner at Khosla Ventures, he teamed with Northwestern nanotech pioneer Chad Mirkin to build Flashpoint. He led the company as founding CEO through a $10M seed round before handing the chief executive role to biotech veteran Barry Labinger in 2025. His mission is deeply personal: his mother died of cancer when he was three.
Örn Almarsson
Örn Almarsson is the co-founder and CEO of Axelyf, an Icelandic-American biotech building next-generation lipid nanoparticles to deliver RNA medicines beyond the liver. Before Axelyf he ran the delivery sciences team at Moderna from 2013 to 2020, helping engineer the components behind the Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine, after earlier stints at Merck and Alkermes. A bioorganic chemist by training, he is the co-author of more than 70 publications and over 60 patents, and is now pairing a proprietary lipid library with a machine-learning model called ANNA to crack the hardest problem in RNA medicine: delivery.
Pacira BioSciences, Inc.
Pacira BioSciences (Nasdaq: PCRX) is a U.S. biopharmaceutical company built around a single, stubborn idea: surgery and chronic pain should not require a bottle of opioids. Its flagship product, EXPAREL, a long-acting local anesthetic built on the proprietary DepoFoam multivesicular-liposome delivery platform, anchors a portfolio that also includes the ZILRETTA knee-osteoarthritis injection and the iovera handheld cryoanalgesia device. With roughly 790 employees and about $726 million in 2025 revenue, Pacira is pushing beyond established analgesics into gene therapy (PCRX-201) under a '5x30' growth strategy aimed at reinventing how the world treats pain.
Rani Therapeutics
Rani Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company building the RaniPill, a swallowable robotic capsule that delivers injectable biologics - peptides, proteins and antibodies - orally, with dissolvable microneedles that painlessly inject the drug into the intestinal wall. Founded in 2012 out of Mir Imran's InCube Labs and now Nasdaq-listed (RANI), Rani aims to replace the needle for chronic conditions ranging from obesity and metabolic disease to immunology and rare disease.
Akin Akinc
Akin Akinc is the founding CEO of Aera Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building a new way to deliver genetic medicines using human protein nanoparticles derived from the body's own retroelements. A chemical engineer by training, he spent nearly two decades at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where he helped invent the lipid nanoparticle delivery that produced ONPATTRO, the world's first approved RNAi therapeutic, and later ran the Givlaari and fitusiran programs. Recruited by CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang, Akinc launched Aera out of stealth in 2023 with $193 million to tackle what he calls genetic medicine's single greatest unmet need: delivery.
Aera Therapeutics
Aera Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech founded on a discovery from CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang: human proteins that can self-assemble into capsid-like shells and ferry genetic cargo into cells. The company is building delivery platforms - protein nanoparticles, targeted lipid nanoparticles, and antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates - to solve the field's most stubborn problem: getting genetic medicines to the right tissue. Launched publicly in 2023 with $193M and led by Alnylam veteran Akin Akinc, Aera is betting that delivery, not the drug itself, is the bottleneck holding back the next generation of genetic medicine.
Novilla Pharmaceuticals
Novilla Pharmaceuticals is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech using a proprietary AI drug-delivery platform to redesign how established drugs reach the body. By pairing chemical-thermodynamic machine learning with deep eutectic solvents and ionic liquids, Novilla formulates non-invasive transdermal creams that concentrate a drug at its site of action while minimizing systemic exposure. Its lead candidate, NOV-1776 for gout flares, reported a 212% increase in efficacy over standard of care with under 1% systemic exposure and no GI adverse events in early human trials, positioning the company as a non-addictive alternative in pain care.
NVIGEN Inc.
NVIGEN Inc. is a Sunnyvale, California nanobiotechnology company that engineers multifunctional, biodegradable magnetic and fluorescent nanoparticles for biomedical research, diagnostics and therapeutics. Built on its proprietary nanoparticle-imaging-delivery (NID) and MagVigen platforms, NVIGEN makes reagents and assays that capture DNA, RNA, proteins and rare cells from a single blood or tissue sample - powering liquid biopsy, NGS/multiomics sample preparation, single-cell spatial sequencing, and targeted drug and cell therapy. Its products are used by researchers at more than 40 institutions worldwide.
SURGE Therapeutics
SURGE Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts clinical-stage biotech building intraoperative immunotherapy: a biodegradable, injectable hydrogel (SURGERx) placed directly into the surgical wound at the moment a tumor is removed. The goal is to turn the body's post-surgical inflammation from immunosuppressive to immunostimulatory and stop residual cancer cells from seeding recurrence and metastasis. Founded on research from Harvard Medical School and led by founder-CEO Michael Goldberg, Ph.D., the company has raised about $58M and is advancing its lead candidate SRG-514 toward a registrational trial in triple-negative breast cancer.
Larry Brown
Larry Brown, Sc.D., is Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at Noveome Biotherapeutics, the Pittsburgh clinical-stage biopharma he joined in 2012. He is leading the translation of ST266, a cell-free secretome of hundreds of proteins harvested from amnion-derived cells, from proof of principle into the clinic. Trained at MIT under Robert Langer and in Judah Folkman's surgical research lab at Children's Hospital Boston, he spent 35-plus years inventing drug-delivery systems at Baxter, Alkermes and biotech startups, accumulating more than 100 publications and a thick stack of patents along the way.
Michael Goldberg
Michael Goldberg is the founder and CEO of SURGE Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech pioneering intraoperative immunotherapy. His idea is deceptively simple: when a surgeon removes a solid tumor, don't leave the cavity empty - fill it with an injectable, biodegradable hydrogel that releases immune-activating medicine right where cancer is most likely to return. A trained chemist who earned a PhD at MIT under Robert Langer and did postdoctoral work with Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp, Goldberg became a Harvard Medical School professor before leaving academia to translate his lab's discovery into the clinic. SURGE has raised roughly $58M, cleared an FDA IND, and completed Phase 1 dosing of its lead program ahead of a registrational trial in triple-negative breast cancer.