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.
NeoPhore is a UK small-molecule immuno-oncology company developing first-in-class inhibitors of the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) pathway. By temporarily switching off MMR, its drugs are designed to make tumours generate fresh neoantigens, become visible to the immune system, and respond to checkpoint immunotherapy - extending the benefit of drugs like Keytruda to patients whose cancers are otherwise immune-cold. A 2017 spin-out of Cambridge's PhoreMost, NeoPhore has raised roughly $47M and counts Bristol Myers Squibb and Memorial Sloan Kettering among its backers and collaborators.
Geneos Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company in Plymouth Meeting / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, building DNA-based personalized immunotherapies for cancer. Its proprietary GT-EPIC platform reads a patient's own tumor mutations and manufactures a custom DNA plasmid vaccine encoding up to 40 of that patient's unique neoantigens, delivered intradermally with an IL-12 cytokine adjuvant and electroporation. In 2024 the company published Phase 1/2 GT-30 data in Nature Medicine showing its vaccine plus pembrolizumab generated new neoantigen-specific T cells and clinical responses in advanced liver cancer - billed as the first definitive demonstration of a personalized cancer vaccine boosting response to anti-PD-1 therapy.
BlueSphere Bio is a Pittsburgh-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing personalized T-cell receptor (TCR) therapies for cancer. Spun out of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Enterprises in 2017, the company's proprietary TCXpress platform rapidly discovers and screens natural T-cell receptors that can target cancer antigens hidden inside cells - a reach beyond what conventional CAR-T therapies achieve. Its lead programs target high-risk hematologic malignancies such as relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia.