new-york-biotech
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Jose Galarza Built a Vaccine Company Around a Perfect Fake
For more than two decades, the Argentine-trained virologist has run TechnoVax on one durable idea: build convincing copies of viruses, leave out the genetic machinery, and make the platform do more than one job.
Dimi Kellari
Dimi Kellari is the co-founder and CEO of Neion Bio, a New York biotech using genetically engineered chicken eggs as biological factories to produce complex biologics like monoclonal antibodies at a fraction of the usual cost. An MIT-trained aerospace engineer who previously built autonomous-vehicle infrastructure at Cavnue and worked at Alphabet's X moonshot factory and McKinsey, Kellari co-founded Neion in 2024 with biologist Dr. Sam Levin around a single question: why, in 2024, are we still making our most important medicines in hamster cells? In June 2026 the company closed an oversubscribed $23 million Series A led by Caffeinated Capital.
Neion Bio
Neion Bio is a New York biotech company that genetically engineers chicken eggs into factories for complex biologic drugs. Its Raptor platform aims to make monoclonal antibodies and other glycosylated proteins at a fraction of the capital cost and carbon footprint of conventional cell-culture bioreactors. Founded in 2024 and emerged from stealth in March 2026, the company raised an oversubscribed $23 million Series A in June 2026 and signed an early multi-product biosimilar deal with a major global pharmaceutical company.
Prolium Bioscience
Prolium Bioscience is a New York-based, clinical-stage biotechnology company developing PRO-203, a bispecific CD20xCD3 T-cell engager designed to deplete disease-driving B cells as an off-the-shelf therapy for severe autoimmune diseases, starting with systemic sclerosis and lupus. Founded in 2025 and backed by RTW Investments, the company in-licensed global non-oncology and ex-Asia oncology rights to the antibody from China's InnoCare Pharma and KeyMed Biosciences, and launched publicly in March 2026 with a $50 million Series A alongside first-patient dosing.
Sanavia Oncology Inc.
Sanavia Oncology is a New York-based biotech company developing next-generation cancer immunotherapies for patients who don't benefit from existing treatments. Its proprietary platform pairs high-throughput sequencing, single-molecule super-resolution microscopy, 3D protein modeling and artificial intelligence to discover novel, clinically relevant cancer-specific epitopes in drug-resistant tumors, then generates antibodies with atomic-level specificity to those targets. The company is building antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific T cell engagers (TCEs) and CAR-T therapies - led by its SANA-01 ADC - and is backed by Two Bear Capital.
SEED Therapeutics
SEED Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering rationally designed molecular glue degraders to treat diseases driven by proteins long considered undruggable. Powered by its proprietary RITE3 discovery platform - which pairs disease-causing target proteins with the most suitable of more than 600 human E3 ligases - SEED reprograms the cell's own ubiquitin-proteasome system to destroy harmful proteins rather than merely block them. Founded in 2020 by CEO Lan Huang and a group of protein-degradation pioneers including Nobel laureate Avram Hershko, the company advanced its lead oral RBM39 degrader ST-01156 into first-in-human Phase 1 trials in early 2026, with a broader pipeline spanning oncology, neurodegeneration, immunology and virology backed by partners Eli Lilly and Eisai.
Stablix, Inc.
Stablix, Inc. is a preclinical biopharmaceutical company pioneering targeted protein stabilization (TPS), a new therapeutic modality that does the opposite of protein degraders. Its RESTORE platform generates heterobifunctional small molecules called RESTORACs that recruit deubiquitinase enzymes (DUBs) to selectively remove ubiquitin from disease-relevant proteins, restoring deficient proteins to therapeutic levels or correcting aberrant protein function. Co-located in New York City and Boston and founded on science from Columbia University, Stablix has raised roughly $78M and is developing programs in cancer, rare diseases and immunological disorders, including a strategic collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Laura Katz
Laura Katz is the founder and CEO of Helaina, a New York biotech company that uses precision fermentation to produce human-identical bioactive proteins. Its first product, effera, is the world's first commercially available human lactoferrin made through yeast fermentation. A food scientist by training and once NYU's youngest adjunct professor in Food Science, Katz started the company in 2019 from her Lower East Side kitchen after hearing a podcast about the black market for breast milk. She has raised more than $80 million to move Helaina from research into a commercial ingredient business.
Server Ertem
Server Ertem is the founder and CEO of Sanavia Oncology, a New York biotech developing antibody drug conjugates, T-cell engagers, and CAR-T therapies aimed at the roughly 80% of cancer patients whose tumors escape today's treatments. He built the company after a PhD in cancer cell biology at Weill Cornell, a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and a Runway Startup Postdoc fellowship at Cornell Tech - stitching high-throughput cell biology, super-resolution microscopy, and machine learning into a platform designed to find cancer-specific epitopes on validated targets with atomic-level precision.
HexemBio
HexemBio is a New York- and Berkeley-based biotech building what it calls the first blood stem cell rejuvenation therapy. Its Synthetic Human Yolk Sac platform recreates the embryonic environment where blood stem cells first arise, temporarily placing a patient's own aged hematopoietic stem cells into that synthetic young niche before returning them by IV infusion - rather than gene-editing or chemically reprogramming the cells. The company launched publicly in April 2026 with a $10.4M seed round led by Draper Associates, holds an FDA Orphan Drug Designation for a bone-marrow-transplant program in blood cancers, and is targeting first-in-human trials in 2027.
Nilo Therapeutics
Nilo Therapeutics is a New York-based biotechnology company developing a new class of medicines that target the brain-body neural circuits regulating the immune system. Building on discoveries that identified specific vagal neurons controlling systemic inflammation, Nilo aims to restore immune homeostasis centrally rather than broadly suppress the immune system, offering a differentiated approach to treating autoimmune and inflammatory disease. The company launched out of stealth in October 2025 with a $101 million Series A.
Linh Hoang
Linh Hoang, MD, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer of HistoWiz, the New York based digital pathology company building PathologyMap, a platform that automates histology and connects researchers to top pathologists on demand. A physician-scientist turned operator, he trained at the University of Pennsylvania, cut his teeth at Boston Consulting Group, and ran businesses at Thermo Fisher and PerkinElmer before leading two diagnostics companies as CEO, Boston Microfluidics and its successor Weavr Health, ahead of joining HistoWiz in October 2022.
Excelsior Sciences
Excelsior Sciences is a New York City biotech building 'machine-native chemistry' - a way to make small molecules that machines can execute and AI can learn from. Its proprietary smart bloccs platform turns drug synthesis into a modular, automation-friendly, iterative process, closing the loop between AI-driven discovery and real-world manufacturing. Founded in 2024 and spun out of Deerfield Management, the company raised $95M in late 2025 to scale the platform and reshore U.S. drug discovery and production.
Fathom Therapeutics
Fathom Therapeutics (formerly Atommap) is a New York and Boston based biotech building Microcosmos, a drug-design engine that fuses quantum chemistry and AI to simulate how proteins actually move inside living cells. By modeling motion instead of static snapshots - reportedly up to 10,000x faster than conventional simulation - the company hunts for the fleeting binding pockets that make 'undruggable' targets druggable, then designs small molecules, degraders, and molecular glues against them. In April 2026 it raised a $47M oversubscribed Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures.
Olatec Therapeutics
Olatec Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in New York developing a platform of oral NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors to treat acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. Its lead compound, dapansutrile (OLT1177), is a selective small-molecule NLRP3 inhibitor that has shown clinical benefit and a clean safety profile across gout, heart failure and a broad range of inflammatory and neuroinflammatory conditions, positioning oral inflammasome blockade as a potential alternative to injectable IL-1 biologics.
Damaris Skouras
Damaris Skouras is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Olatec Therapeutics, a New York clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company built around dapansutrile, an oral, specific NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitor she has pushed from the lab bench into Phase 2 trials spanning gout, melanoma, type 2 diabetes, and Parkinson's disease. She started in finance as a Wall Street biotech banker in 1982, founded her own investment advisory firm in 1985, and eventually crossed the table to run the kind of company she used to finance. With a Stanford degree, a Harvard MBA, and the immunologist who discovered interleukin-1 as her co-founder, she has raised over $100 million to bet that a single inflammatory switch can be turned off across a range of diseases.
Huafeng Xu
Huafeng Xu is the founder and CEO of Fathom Therapeutics (formerly AtomMap), a New York drug-design company that simulates protein motion at atomic resolution to design small molecules that work inside living cells. A computational chemist with 25+ years and 10,000+ citations, Xu spent 12 years at D. E. Shaw Research building the free-energy and molecular-dynamics methods now standard across pharma, then served as CTO of Silicon Therapeutics and Roivant Discovery before launching his own company. In April 2026 Fathom closed an oversubscribed $47M Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures to scale its Microcosmos engine.
Michael Foley
Michael Foley is a medicinal chemist turned serial biotech founder who is now CEO and co-founder of Excelsior Sciences, a New York company building 'chemistry that machines can do.' His proprietary 'smart blocc' building blocks let robots and AI run iterative carbon-carbon bond formation in a closed loop, aiming to collapse the wall between drug discovery and manufacturing. Foley has founded multiple biotechs, ran the Broad Institute's Chemical Biology Platform, and was founding CEO of the Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute. Excelsior launched with $95 million in 2025.