lipid-nanoparticles
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Shehnaaz Suliman built a career by changing the scale of the problem
From Cape Flats protests to Oxford, Wall Street and the biotech boardroom, Suliman kept asking one question: how can one decision reach more people?
The $1 Billion Bet on Editing Cholesterol Once - Then Never Again
Verve Therapeutics spent seven years turning a genetic observation into a one-infusion cholesterol treatment. Its first delivery system stumbled; the replacement helped sell the company to Lilly and may redraw the boundary between a drug and a permanent decision.
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.
Rejuvenation Technologies Inc.
Rejuvenation Technologies is a Stanford-spun biotech developing modified-mRNA therapeutics that temporarily switch on telomerase to lengthen telomeres and reverse cellular aging in specific tissues. Its lead programs target fibrotic and age-related diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, chronic liver disease and bone-marrow failure, delivered by proprietary tissue-targeted lipid nanoparticles. Backed by Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, the company holds 50+ patents and is advancing toward Phase I clinical readouts.
John Ramunas
John Ramunas, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rejuvenation Technologies Inc., a Mountain View, CA biotechnology company pioneering mRNA-based telomere extension therapy to reverse cellular aging. A serial entrepreneur turned neuroscientist, Ramunas spent his PhD at Stanford's Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology inventing the first safe, nonimmunogenic TERT mRNA drug - a technology now protected by 50+ patents. His company, backed by Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, is advancing a pipeline targeting fatal orphan diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and liver cirrhosis, with the long-term vision of a single therapy taken every few years to prevent age-related disease.
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.
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.
ONI
ONI (Oxford Nanoimaging) is an Oxford University spinout that shrank the super-resolution microscope from a room-sized, six-figure instrument into a desktop box the size of a sheet of A4 paper. Its flagship Nanoimager resolves single molecules down to 20 nm and pairs with the cloud-based CODI platform for analysis and collaboration, opening single-molecule science to labs studying everything from extracellular vesicles to lipid nanoparticles and cancer.
ReCode Therapeutics
ReCode Therapeutics is a clinical-stage genetic medicines company using its Selective Organ Targeting (SORT) lipid nanoparticle platform to deliver mRNA and gene-correction therapies beyond the liver. Its lead programs target cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia - rare respiratory diseases where existing modulators leave many patients without options.
David Lockhart
David J. Lockhart, Ph.D. is President and Chief Scientific Officer of ReCode Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech pioneering nonviral lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery of mRNA and gene-editing payloads to the lungs for genetic respiratory diseases including cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia. With more than 25 years in drug discovery and genomics — from co-founding Ambit Biosciences to leading science at Amicus Therapeutics — Lockhart brings rare-disease chops and deep genomics expertise to ReCode's SORT LNP platform, which has raised $345M and dosed its first patients in a Phase 1 PCD trial.