infectious-disease
(7)
Merck
KEYTRUDA made Merck an oncology powerhouse. Now the 135-year-old drugmaker is spending, partnering and inventing its way toward a future that cannot depend on one medicine.
Virtue Diagnostics
Virtue Diagnostics is a platform-based in vitro diagnostics (IVD) company headquartered in Singapore, with manufacturing in Suzhou, China and clinical operations in Beijing. Founded in 2019, it develops affordable diagnostic instruments and reagents across chemiluminescence, clinical chemistry, hematology, clinical mass spectrometry, multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC) and molecular diagnostics, aiming to serve patients through every stage of disease - from early screening and diagnosis to treatment monitoring and minimal residual disease management. Its strategy centers on localized innovation and expansion in emerging markets including China, Singapore, Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines. The company closed a US$100 million Series B round in January 2022 led by Sequoia China and Morningside Ventures.
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.
Resilienci.ai
Resilienci.ai is an Austin-based digital health company using artificial intelligence, machine learning and hyperlocal data to help people and public health agencies understand and reduce infectious-disease risk. Founded by Eric Klasson and operating as a Pandemic Insights company, it builds a free consumer mobile app paired with a web-based platform for health agencies, aiming to deliver the world's first interoperable, multi-pathogen digital health solution for outbreaks and pandemics.
Karius
Karius is a Redwood City, California life-sciences company that turns a single blood draw into a broad infectious-disease diagnosis. Its flagship Karius Test uses microbial cell-free DNA (mcfDNA) sequencing, metagenomics and AI to detect more than 1,000 pathogens - bacteria, DNA viruses, fungi and parasites - often within a day of receiving a sample. Founded in 2014 out of Stephen Quake's lab at Stanford, the company aims to give clinicians a fast, non-invasive alternative to invasive biopsies and slow cultures, with a focus on the immunocompromised patients who need answers most urgently.
Paragon Genomics
Paragon Genomics is a Fremont, California biotechnology company that makes it faster and cheaper to read the parts of a genome that actually matter. Its patented CleanPlex amplicon sequencing technology turns tiny or degraded DNA and RNA samples into sequencing-ready libraries in a few hours, powering targeted next-generation sequencing for cancer research, infectious-disease surveillance, inherited-disease testing and agricultural genomics. Founded in 2015 and backed by an $8M Series A, the company sells both ready-to-use and custom NGS panels to more than 300 labs worldwide.
Paratek Pharmaceuticals
Paratek Pharmaceuticals is a Boston-based commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company built on tetracycline chemistry to fight drug-resistant bacterial infections. Its flagship antibiotic NUZYRA (omadacycline) is a once-daily oral and IV broad-spectrum drug approved by the FDA in 2018 for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia and acute skin infections, and it is also being developed under a major BARDA contract as a national-stockpile countermeasure against pulmonary anthrax. Paratek also originated SEYSARA (sarecycline) for acne. Now privately held by Gurnet Point Capital and Novo Holdings after a 2023 acquisition, the company positions itself as a defender of public health against the slow-moving pandemic of antimicrobial resistance.