Syntax Bio is a Chicago synthetic biology company building Cellgorithm, a CRISPR-based platform that programs stem cells to differentiate on command. Instead of coaxing stem cells into specialized cell types through months of manual, growth-factor-heavy protocols, Cellgorithm encodes the sequence of gene activations that mimic human development into a single DNA program, collapsing timelines from months to weeks. Spun out of the University of Illinois Chicago and formerly known as Cellgorithmics, the company has raised more than $25 million and is advancing a pancreatic beta cell therapy for type 1 diabetes while partnering with biopharma to program cells at scale.
Prellis Biologics is a Berkeley, California biotech that 3D-prints human lymph node organoids to grow real human antibodies in a dish. Its EXIS platform uses holographic two-photon laser bioprinting plus AI to recreate the human immune response in vitro, discovering fully human antibody therapeutics faster and cheaper than animal-based methods, including against difficult targets like GPCRs where mouse models fail.
Vivodyne is a biotech company that grows more than 20 types of lifelike human organ tissues in the lab, then uses robotic automation to dose, cultivate, and analyze more than 10,000 of them at a time. The vast human datasets it generates feed multimodal AI models that predict how new drugs will behave in people - before they ever reach a clinical trial. The pitch is blunt: roughly 95% of therapies that work in animal models fail in human trials, and Vivodyne wants to fix that gap with real human data instead of mice.