noncanonical-amino-acids
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Tina Boville wanted dragons. She built a bigger chemical alphabet.
Childhood science fiction gave Christina "Tina" Boville an idea: biology could make things nature had never tried. A detour through recycling bins, evolved enzymes and startup auctions turned that idea into Aralez Bio.
Tina Boville
Tina Boville is the co-founder and CEO of Aralez Bio, a Berkeley-based biotechnology company using directed evolution to make noncanonical amino acids - the building blocks behind a growing share of modern medicines. A biochemist trained at the University of Colorado and Caltech, where she worked in Nobel laureate Frances Arnold's lab, Boville turned an engineered enzyme platform into a company that can produce over 100 amino acids in single-step reactions, cutting manufacturing waste by up to 99%. She has been named to MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35, is an Activate Fellow, and in 2024 raised a $12 million Series A to scale production to tons per year.