oral-biologics
(3)
Aizen Therapeutics
Aizen Therapeutics is a San Diego, AI-driven biotech spun out of Caltech that designs Mirror Peptides - synthetic drugs built entirely from D-amino acids, the mirror image of the L-amino acids that make up natural proteins. Its DaX platform pairs generative AI with structural biology to design these molecules from scratch, aiming for drugs with the potency of biologics but greater stability, lower immunogenicity, and the potential to be taken orally. The company emerged from stealth in November 2024 with a $13M seed round.
Rani Therapeutics
Rani Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company building the RaniPill, a swallowable robotic capsule that delivers injectable biologics - peptides, proteins and antibodies - orally, with dissolvable microneedles that painlessly inject the drug into the intestinal wall. Founded in 2012 out of Mir Imran's InCube Labs and now Nasdaq-listed (RANI), Rani aims to replace the needle for chronic conditions ranging from obesity and metabolic disease to immunology and rare disease.
Imagine Pharma
Imagine Pharma is a Pittsburgh biotechnology company built around IMG-1, a novel polypeptide its founder discovered in a tea plant from his native Vietnam. From that single molecule the company runs three platforms - Oral Delivery (making injectable biologics swallowable), Therapeutics, and Regenerative Medicine - with first-in-class programs aimed at curing type 1 diabetes, accelerating diabetic wound healing, and making injections obsolete. Alongside its pipeline, Imagine operates an NIH-approved islet isolation center that has completed dozens of clinical islet cell procedures for major U.S. hospital systems.