Alentis Therapeutics is a Swiss clinical-stage biotech built around a single, unusual biological target: Claudin-1 (CLDN1), a tight-junction protein that becomes exposed in both fibrotic tissue and solid tumors. Founded in 2019 on the discovery of physician-scientist Professor Thomas Baumert, the company develops first-in-class monoclonal antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates that bind exposed CLDN1 to reverse organ fibrosis and treat CLDN1-positive cancers. Headquartered in Allschwil near Basel with R&D roots in Strasbourg, Alentis has raised roughly $365 million across rounds, including a $181.4 million Series D in November 2024, and is running clinical trials for its lead antibody lixudebart (ALE.F02) and two ADCs, ALE.P02 and ALE.P03.
Delphia Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech pioneering a new field of cancer biology it calls activation lethality - the idea that cancer cells with oncogenic mutations live dangerously close to the upper limit of how much pathway activity they can tolerate, and can be pushed past it. Rather than blocking cancer signals like most drugs, Delphia designs targeted activators that overload cancer's stress pathways until the cell dies, aiming for durable benefit and a way around drug resistance. Founded in 2024 by Kevin Marks, Bill Sellers and Mike Dillon, it launched with a $67 million Series A led by GV, Nextech Invest, Polaris Innovation Fund and Alexandria Venture Investments.
Imagine Pharma is a Pittsburgh biotechnology company built around IMG-1, a novel polypeptide its founder discovered in a tea plant from his native Vietnam. From that single molecule the company runs three platforms - Oral Delivery (making injectable biologics swallowable), Therapeutics, and Regenerative Medicine - with first-in-class programs aimed at curing type 1 diabetes, accelerating diabetic wound healing, and making injections obsolete. Alongside its pipeline, Imagine operates an NIH-approved islet isolation center that has completed dozens of clinical islet cell procedures for major U.S. hospital systems.
Salubris Biotherapeutics (SalubrisBio) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in Gaithersburg, Maryland that engineers complex biologics for diseases with few good options - chiefly heart failure and cancer. Founded in 2016 as the US arm of China's Shenzhen Salubris Pharmaceuticals, its lead candidate JK07 is an antibody-fusion protein designed to harness the regenerative NRG-1/ErbB4 pathway in failing hearts while dialing out the side effects, and its oncology programs JK08 and JK06 pursue solid tumors through immune engagement and a 5T4-targeted biparatopic antibody-drug conjugate.
Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals is a Waltham, Massachusetts biotech founded in 2016 to discover the next generation of drugs for brain disorders. Led by neurobiologist and former Eli Lilly and Sunovion executive Tom Large, the company designs novel, CNS-focused 'privileged chemotypes' and pairs them with systems-neurobiology behavioral assays and AI to hunt first-in-class small molecules for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Its work runs through partnerships with phenotypic-screening firm PsychoGenics and AI drug-design company Exscientia.
Keythera (Suzhou) Biopharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biotech building first-in-class small molecule drugs for cancer and autoimmune disease. Its core edge is ADMS - Affinity Detection by Mass Spectroscopy - an affinity-based high-throughput screening platform that can screen up to 250,000 compounds per day per workstation and fuses bioinformatics, structural chemistry, computer-aided drug design and AI to find and optimize drug candidates faster and at lower risk. Founded in 2020 by industry veteran Dr. Yongqi Deng, the company has built six pipelines, advanced its lead EP4 antagonist KF-0210 into the clinic, and raised roughly RMB 100M in Series A funding.
Adam Rosenthal is the CEO and Founder of Star Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech he launched in 2018 with a mission to develop life-changing therapies for rare diseases. An MIT and Harvard-trained biomedical engineer, Rosenthal built Star around the insight that shared biology across multiple rare diseases can yield single therapies addressing many conditions at once. His lead asset VGA039 - a first-in-class monoclonal antibody targeting Protein S - entered Phase 3 trials in 2025 for von Willebrand disease, the most common inherited bleeding disorder. Star has raised over $315 million from top-tier life sciences investors including Sanofi Ventures and Viking Global Investors.