pharmaceutical-manufacturing
(3)
Will Cao
Will (Yangxiaolu) Cao is the co-founder and CEO of Pando Bioscience (YC W23), a Watertown, Massachusetts company using generative AI and ultra-high-throughput screening to engineer better enzymes for pharmaceutical manufacturing and life-science tools. A Ph.D. scientist who switched from mechanical engineering to engineering bacteria, she published first-author papers in Cell and Nature Biotechnology and was an early employee at Ginkgo Bioworks before starting Pando in 2022.
Fabian Gerlinghaus
Fabian Gerlinghaus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cellares, a South San Francisco biotech company building the world's first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) for cell therapy. An aerospace engineer turned life-science entrepreneur, he co-founded Cellares in 2019 after spotting a critical gap: FDA-approved CAR-T therapies were sitting ready while patients died on waitlists because manufacturing couldn't scale. His Cell Shuttle platform — a fully automated, factory-in-a-box system processing 16 patient batches simultaneously — has attracted $630M in funding, a $380M partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb, and FDA's Advanced Manufacturing Technology designation. TIME magazine named it one of 2025's most important inventions.
Nathaniel Fernhoff
Nathaniel Fernhoff is the CEO and Co-founder of Orca Bio, a late-stage biotechnology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, developing high-precision allogeneic T-cell immunotherapies to treat blood cancers and autoimmune diseases. Holding a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley and dual Bachelor's degrees in Biological Sciences and Mathematics from Stanford, Fernhoff co-founded Orca Bio in 2016 based on decades-old Stanford research. He rose from Chief Scientific Officer to CEO in May 2025, leading the company through a landmark Phase 3 clinical trial for Orca-T - showing 78% survival free from chronic graft-versus-host disease versus 38% for standard-of-care - a BLA submission under FDA Priority Review, and a $250M Series F round bringing total funding to over $625M. With a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sacramento capable of producing ~3,000 cell therapy products per year, Fernhoff is steering Orca Bio toward potential commercialization and a cure for blood diseases without compromise.