immunotherapy
(57)
Sabah Oney
Sabah Oney is the president and CEO of Dispatch Bio, a Philadelphia- and San Francisco-based biotech engineering a universal treatment for solid tumors using CAR-T cell therapy. Born in Cyprus and in the U.S. since age 18, he holds a genetics degree from the University of Kansas, a PhD in genetics and genomics from Duke, and an MBA from Stanford. Across nearly two decades in biotech he helped scale Ariosa Diagnostics (acquired by Roche), took Alector public as its chief business officer, co-founded Vilya, and served as a venture partner at ARCH. Dispatch launched publicly in 2025 with $216 million behind its FLARE platform and CAR-T pioneer Carl June among its founders.
Daniel Getts
Daniel Getts, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of CREATE Medicines (formerly Myeloid Therapeutics), a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building RNA-based in vivo immune programming therapies that reprogram T cells, NK cells and myeloid cells directly inside the body. An immunologist trained at the University of Sydney with an MBA from Western Michigan, he previously founded Cour Pharmaceuticals and served as VP of Research at TCR2 Therapeutics. He has more than 45 peer-reviewed publications, multiple issued patents, and a track record of large pharma partnerships, including Takeda's $420M licensing deal for TIMP-GLIA. In May 2026 CREATE closed a $122 million Series B to advance its in vivo CAR pipeline across autoimmune disease and oncology.
Baseimmune
Baseimmune is a London-based biotech that uses a proprietary deep-learning platform to design synthetic antigens - the active ingredients in vaccines and immunotherapies. Founded in 2019 by three researchers who met at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the company originally built AI-designed 'future-proof' vaccine candidates against fast-mutating pathogens such as coronavirus, malaria and African swine fever. In 2026 it extended its computational antigen-design platform beyond infectious disease into chronic conditions, with a lead program targeting idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Baseimmune closed an $11.3M (about GBP 9M) Series A in February 2024 led by MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and IQ Capital.
CREATE Medicines
CREATE Medicines is a Cambridge, Massachusetts clinical-stage biotech building in vivo immune programming - therapies that use an mRNA-lipid nanoparticle platform to turn a patient's own T cells, NK cells, and myeloid cells into chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) cells directly inside the body, rather than extracting and re-engineering them in a lab. Formerly Myeloid Therapeutics, the company rebranded in October 2025 as its pipeline expanded beyond myeloid cells and cancer into autoimmune disease and fibrosis. Its repeat-dosable, off-the-shelf approach aims to make CAR therapy cheaper and more scalable than conventional cell therapy, and the company says it has dosed more than 50 patients - among the largest clinical datasets for in vivo CAR to date.
HERVolution Therapeutics
HERVolution Therapeutics is a Copenhagen-based biotechnology company developing immunotherapies that target human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) - dormant remnants of ancient viruses embedded in human DNA that can reactivate with age and disease. Formerly named InProTher, the company has engineered a proprietary platform that redesigns these 'dark genome' antigens to break immune tolerance, making them visible to the immune system for the first time. Its off-the-shelf vector-based pipeline, led by IPT-001, aims to treat cancer, metabolic disease, and other diseases of aging.
Illimis Therapeutics
Illimis Therapeutics is a Seoul-based biotechnology company developing protein-based medicines for central nervous system and immune diseases. Its proprietary GAIA (Gas6-mediated Anti-Inflammatory Adaptor) platform builds bispecific fusion proteins that engage the body's TAM receptors to clear misfolded proteins such as amyloid-beta through phagocytosis without triggering the inflammation and ARIA side effects associated with existing antibody drugs. Founded in 2021, the company raised a $42 million Series B in July 2025 and is advancing a lead Alzheimer's candidate, ILM01, toward an IND by the end of 2027.
Debra Weidanz
Debra Wawro Weidanz is the co-founder, CEO and chief scientist of Resonant Sensors Incorporated, an Arlington, Texas biotech that builds label-free, high-throughput biosensor systems used to speed antibody discovery, drug screening and diagnostics. An electrical engineer turned inventor, she developed the company's guided-mode resonance sensor technology out of research at the University of Texas at Arlington, and later co-founded the cancer-immunotherapy startup Abexxa Biologics, which Boehringer Ingelheim acquired in 2021. With her husband Jon, she has become a notable UTA benefactor, funding a named tissue-engineering lab and research fellowships.
Leucid Bio
Leucid Bio is a clinical-stage London biotech developing next-generation CAR-T cell therapies for refractory solid tumors. Spun out of King's College London in 2014 to commercialize two decades of research by Dr John Maher, the company's proprietary Lateral CAR platform redesigns the CAR receptor so its signalling domains sit laterally alongside the cell membrane - mimicking natural immune receptors to boost potency while reducing toxicity. Its lead candidate, LEU011, is an autologous NKG2D-targeting CAR-T therapy now in the Phase I/IIa AERIAL trial for refractory solid tumors.
Mirror Biologics, Inc.
Mirror Biologics is a clinical-stage, international biopharmaceutical company developing an 'off-the-shelf' class of immunotherapy built on living, non-genetically-manipulated immune cells. Its patented Mirror Effect platform - protected by more than 200 issued patents - powers a pipeline led by AlloStim for cancer, AlloPrime as a universal anti-viral vaccine for the elderly, and StimVax as a neoantigen vaccine. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida with GMP manufacturing in Jerusalem and clinical operations across Thailand and Malaysia, the company is advancing AlloStim into late-stage trials, including a Phase II metastatic colorectal cancer study run in collaboration with Merck KGaA.
NextRNA Therapeutics
NextRNA Therapeutics was a Boston-based biotechnology company pioneering small-molecule drugs that target long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) - a vast, largely undrugged region of the genome that regulates gene expression. Built on the science of Dana-Farber's Carl Novina and led by co-founder and CEO Dominique Verhelle, the company developed a proprietary discovery engine to map disease-relevant lncRNA-protein interactions and drug them with selective small molecules across oncology and immunology. NextRNA raised roughly $56 million in seed and Series A financing and signed a collaboration with Bayer worth up to $547 million before winding down operations in August 2025 amid a difficult biotech market and a missed partnership milestone.
Resonant Sensors Incorporated
Resonant Sensors Incorporated (RSI) is an Arlington, Texas biotechnology company that builds label-free optical biosensor systems based on its patented guided-mode resonance (GMR) technology. Its ResoSens Ultra-Mab Pro benchtop plate reader and disposable Bionetic microarray plates let researchers watch molecular binding interactions in real time, in a standard 96-well format, using tiny sample volumes and no fluorescent labels. RSI targets antibody discovery, epitope binning, hybridoma screening, kinetics and cell-based assays for immunotherapy, diagnostics and life-science research, and also offers analytical contract testing services.
Elizabeth Czerepak
Elizabeth Czerepak is a life sciences finance executive with more than three decades in big pharma, venture capital, and public biotech. She is Chief Financial Officer and VP of Corporate Development at Mirror Biologics, a clinical-stage immunotherapy company in Wesley Chapel, Florida, where she also served as acting CEO from July 2024 to May 2025. Over her career she has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars, taken companies public through IPOs and SPAC mergers, and worked on landmark pharma transactions including the search that led to BASF Pharma's sale to Abbott. She sits on the boards of Delcath Systems and TransCode Therapeutics.
Howard L. Kaufman
Howard L. Kaufman, M.D., FACS, is a surgical oncologist and cancer immunotherapy pioneer who serves as President and CEO of Ankyra Therapeutics, a Boston clinical-stage biotech developing anchored immunotherapies. He led the pivotal Phase III trial of T-VEC, the first oncolytic virus ever approved by the FDA for cancer, and has published more than 500 scientific papers over a 20-plus year research career. He now leads Ankyra's work on anchored IL-12 therapy, tolododekin alfa (ANK-101), aiming to deliver powerful immune drugs directly into tumors without the toxicity of systemic dosing.
Kevin Walton
Kevin Walton is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of Baseimmune, a London-based biotech using AI and computational protein design to build next-generation vaccines and active immunotherapies. He joined in 2024 after a career in biotech corporate development and dealmaking at Moderna, StrideBio, Curis and G1 Therapeutics, and is steering the company beyond infectious-disease vaccines into chronic diseases, starting with a lead fibrosis program in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Eureka Therapeutics, Inc.
Eureka Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in Emeryville, California, developing next-generation T-cell therapies for cancer, with a focus on hard-to-treat solid tumors. Founded in 2006 by Dr. Cheng Liu, the company pairs its E-ALPHA phage-display antibody engine with its ARTEMIS T-cell receptor platform - an alternative to conventional CAR-T designed to keep engineered T cells potent inside immunosuppressive tumors while sharply reducing the inflammatory cytokine release linked to CAR-T toxicity. Its lead program, ECT204, targets GPC3-positive advanced liver cancer and has received FDA RMAT designation.
Apeximmune Therapeutics
Apeximmune Therapeutics is a South San Francisco / Burlingame-area biotechnology company developing next-generation antibody therapeutics that harness the immune system to treat cancer and autoimmune disease. Using a proprietary target-discovery platform built on bioinformatic analysis of thousands of tumor RNA-seq transcriptomes, the company has identified more than 30 novel immune targets. Its lead program, AI-306, is a first-in-class antagonist antibody against the novel immune checkpoint AIM-103, and its MEBA platform builds bispecific antibodies that engage macrophages to kill tumor cells. The company closed a $21.3 million Series A in 2025 led by PharmaEssentia.
Lyvgen Biopharma
Lyvgen Biopharma is a Shanghai-based clinical-stage immuno-oncology company founded in 2016 by veteran oncology scientist Dr. Jieyi Wang. It builds agonist antibodies - drugs that switch the immune system on rather than release its brakes - using a proprietary xLinkAb platform designed to concentrate immune activation inside tumors while limiting toxicity elsewhere. Its lead program, the CD137/4-1BB agonist antibody LVGN6051 (exlinkibart), is in Phase Ib/II trials in the US and China, including combinations with Merck's Keytruda, alongside a CD40 agonist (LVGN7409), a PD-1 blocker (LVGN3616), and bispecific candidates. Backed by IDG Capital and others through a Series C, Lyvgen runs R&D in Shanghai, a CMC/manufacturing center in Suzhou, and clinical and business development teams spanning China and the US.
Therini Bio, Inc.
Therini Bio is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing fibrin-targeting immunotherapies for neurodegenerative and retinal diseases driven by vascular dysfunction. Founded in 2019 on the neurovascular research of Dr. Katerina Akassoglou at UCSF and the Gladstone Institutes, the company's lead antibody THN391 selectively blocks fibrin's inflammatory epitope to halt chronic neuroinflammation without interfering with normal blood clotting. Backed by roughly $145M in total funding from investors including Eli Lilly, Sanofi Ventures, Merck's MRL Ventures and the Dementia Discovery Fund, Therini is advancing THN391 into Phase 1b trials for Alzheimer's disease and diabetic macular edema.
J. Robert Coleman
J. Robert Coleman, PhD, MBA, is Chairman and CEO of HERVolution Therapeutics, a Copenhagen-based biotech developing immunotherapies that target human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) - the ancient viral DNA lodged in the dark genome that reawakens in cancer, aging, and neurodegeneration. A trained virologist, he co-founded Codagenix, where he built a synthetic-biology vaccine platform into a clinical-stage pipeline and raised nearly half a billion dollars before pivoting to HERVs in late 2023.
Ability Biotherapeutics
Ability Biotherapeutics (also known as Ability Biologics) is a Montreal-based biotech founded in 2023 that engineers highly selective, immune-cell-modulating antibody therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune disease. Its AbiLeap discovery engine pairs continuously learning AI with one of the largest antibody-antigen interaction databases ever assembled to generate fully human, IgG-based multispecific antibodies that sense their environment and act only where intended - so-called logic-gated therapeutics. Backed by US$18M in seed capital led by Amplitude Ventures, the company is advancing a pipeline of immuno-oncology and autoimmune candidates toward preclinical readiness.
Shennon Biotechnologies
Shennon Biotechnologies is a San Francisco biotech turning immune-cell target discovery from a months-long slog into a same-day job. Its proprietary TCELERATOR platform fuses ultra-high-throughput microfluidics with AI to functionally profile millions of single immune cells in hours, pinpointing the rare T and B cells that recognize cancer antigens. Founded in 2021 by physicist-turned-founder Li Sun, the company is building a pipeline of validated targets for solid tumors and autoimmune disease, backed by a $13M seed round led by DCVC.
Niranjan Sardesai
Niranjan Sardesai is the founder, president and CEO of Geneos Therapeutics, a Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania biotech building personalized DNA-based cancer vaccines that are custom-designed to each patient's own tumor mutations. A Caltech-trained chemist with a Wharton MBA, he spent years as COO helping build Inovio Pharmaceuticals into a Phase III immunotherapy company before spinning out Geneos in 2016. Under his leadership Geneos published a landmark Nature Medicine paper in 2024 showing its neoantigen vaccine drove complete responses in advanced liver cancer, with some patients reaching multi-year, recurrence-free survival.
Bitterroot Bio
Bitterroot Bio is a Palo Alto, California clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the field of cardio-immunology - the science of how the immune system drives heart disease. Founded by veterans of Forty Seven (the CD47 company Gilead bought for ~$5 billion), Bitterroot is turning the immune-checkpoint playbook from cancer toward atherosclerosis. Its lead candidate, BRB-002, is an immunomodulating protein that blocks the CD47 'don't eat me' signal on arterial plaque, prompting macrophages to clear inflammation and stabilize plaque - a mechanism that works differently from cholesterol-lowering drugs. The company launched out of stealth in June 2023 with a $145 million Series A, which it called the largest-ever round for a preclinical cardiovascular biotech.
Pheast Therapeutics
Pheast Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech engineering the innate immune system to attack cancer. Its lead drug, PHST001, is an anti-CD24 macrophage checkpoint inhibitor designed to flip the 'don't eat me' signal that solid tumors use to hide from the body's first-line defenders.
Li Sun
Li Sun is the founder and CEO of Shennon Biotechnologies, a San Francisco single-cell immunotherapy company that profiles millions of immune cells in hours to pinpoint the rare T cells and antibody targets that fight cancer. A physicist by training (PhD from Harvard's Weitz lab, M.Eng from MIT), she spent five years as a deep-tech venture investor at Bessemer and Foundation Capital before building the platform herself. Shennon emerged from stealth in March 2023 with a $13M seed round led by DCVC.
Angèle Maki
Angèle Maki, PhD, is a biopharmaceutical business development executive with more than 20 years of deal-making across emerging biotechs and global pharma. In December 2025 she became the first Chief Business Officer of Ability Biotherapeutics, a Montreal-based company building logic-gated antibodies with its generative-AI platform AbiLeap. A Stanford-trained biological chemist who started at the University of Winnipeg, she has held senior roles at Medarex, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, 23andMe, Merck, Eli Lilly, ReCode Therapeutics and Callio Therapeutics, and chairs the non-profit Canadian Entrepreneurs in Life Sciences.
Sanuj Ravindran
Sanuj Ravindran, M.D., is the CEO of Simcha Therapeutics, a New Haven clinical-stage immunobiology company turning a once-overlooked immune molecule, interleukin-18, into a cancer weapon. A board-certified physician who spent a decade as a venture capitalist before becoming a serial biotech company-builder, Ravindran took the helm in 2022 to push ST-067, a decoy-resistant IL-18 designed to slip past the body's own off-switch and reawaken the immune system inside tumors. He has run drug programs across oncology and rare disease, structured more than $2 billion in deals, and bets his career on therapies that promise more than incremental gains.
Abcuro, Inc.
Abcuro is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in Newton, Massachusetts developing first-in-class immunotherapies that selectively deplete highly cytotoxic T cells implicated in autoimmune tissue damage and certain cancers. Its lead program, ulviprubart (ABC008), is a monoclonal antibody targeting the KLRG1 receptor, advanced primarily for inclusion body myositis (IBM) - a progressive muscle-wasting disease with no approved treatments - alongside pipeline work in T-cell large granular lymphocytic leukemia and T/NK-cell lymphomas.
Arsenal Biosciences, Inc.
Arsenal Biosciences (ArsenalBio) is a clinical-stage, programmable cell therapy company in South San Francisco engineering CAR-T cell therapies for solid tumors. By combining CRISPR genome engineering, synthetic biology, high-throughput target discovery and machine learning, it builds 'integrated circuit T cells' that carry logic gates and multiple drug functions to attack tumors while sparing healthy tissue. Founded in 2019 by surgeon-executive Ken Drazan with leading academic immunologists, the company has raised roughly $850M total, including an oversubscribed $325M Series C in 2024 backed by ARCH, NVIDIA's NVentures, Regeneron Ventures and Bristol Myers Squibb.
HanchorBio Inc. 漢康生技股份有限公司
HanchorBio is a clinical-stage biotechnology company building next-generation cancer and autoimmune therapies on its proprietary Fc-Based Designer Biologics (FBDB) platform. Founded in 2020 by Henlius co-founder Scott Liu, the company engineers multi-target Fc fusion proteins designed to reach tumors that resist conventional PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint drugs. Its lead candidate, HCB101, is an affinity-optimized SIRPalpha-Fc fusion protein targeting the CD47-SIRPalpha 'don't eat me' pathway, engineered to spare red blood cells and avoid the anemia that sank earlier anti-CD47 programs. With operations spanning Taipei, Shanghai, and the San Francisco Bay Area, HanchorBio is advancing a pipeline across solid and hematologic cancers and autoimmune disease.