extracellular-proteins
(3)
Lycia Therapeutics
Lycia Therapeutics is a South San Francisco biotech building lysosomal targeting chimeras (LYTACs) - bifunctional molecules that drag disease-driving extracellular and membrane proteins into the cell's lysosomes for destruction. Founded in 2019 out of the lab of Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, Lycia is advancing a pipeline of autoimmune and inflammatory disease therapies, backed by $226M+ in venture capital and a strategic discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly.
Jordi Mata-Fink
Jordi Mata-Fink is the co-founder and CEO of Gate Bioscience, a Brisbane, California biotech building an entirely new class of small-molecule drugs called Molecular Gates. The idea is deceptively simple and technically audacious: instead of chasing disease-causing proteins after they leave the cell, Gate's molecules park inside the cell's secretory channel (Sec61) and selectively stop a single harmful protein from ever getting out, while letting everything else pass. A chemical engineer trained at Stanford and MIT, Mata-Fink spent years inside Flagship Pioneering helping spin up companies like Editas and Rubius before founding Gate in 2021. The company emerged from stealth in 2023 with $60M, and in November 2025 raised an oversubscribed $65M Series B led by Forbion with Eli Lilly joining, pushing total funding to $135M as it heads toward the clinic. He coaches youth soccer on the side.
Sofia Touami
Sofia Touami, Ph.D., is the Chief Business Officer of Lycia Therapeutics, a South San Francisco biotech pioneering lysosomal targeting chimeras (LYTACs) - a platform invented by Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi to degrade disease-causing extracellular proteins. A trained organic chemist who earned her Ph.D. at Stanford and did postdoctoral work at The Scripps Research Institute, Touami has built a career as one of biotech's sharpest dealmakers, having orchestrated major transactions including Frontier Medicines' landmark global collaboration with AbbVie before joining Lycia in July 2023. She helped close Lycia's oversubscribed $106.6 million Series C in May 2024, positioning the company to bring its LYTAC-based autoimmune therapies into clinical trials.