silicon-valley-biotech
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Shidong Jia
Shidong Jia, MD, PhD, is the founder and global CEO of Predicine, a Silicon Valley precision-oncology company building multi-omic liquid biopsy tests that read cancer from blood and urine. Trained as a physician-scientist at Harbin Medical University, Peking Union Medical College, Dana-Farber and Harvard, he ran oncology biomarker strategy at Genentech before leaving to start Predicine in 2015. His pitch is simple: precision diagnostics to enable precision medicine, built 'From Pharma, For Pharma.'
Kriya Therapeutics, Inc.
Kriya Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company building one-time, AAV-based gene therapies for prevalent chronic diseases of high unmet need. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina with operations in Silicon Valley, Kriya pairs a proprietary, vertically integrated manufacturing and R&D engine with a pipeline spanning ophthalmology, metabolic disease, and neurology. Its bet: gene therapy shouldn't be reserved for the rare few, but engineered and manufactured at the scale and cost needed to reach millions.
Retro Biosciences
Retro Biosciences is a clinical-stage longevity biotech in Redwood City, California with a single, unsubtle goal: add ten healthy years to the human lifespan. Founded in 2018 and launched publicly in 2021 with $180 million from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company attacks aging at the cellular level across three platforms - autophagy enhancement, cellular reprogramming, and plasma-inspired therapeutics. Its lead drug, RTR242, an autophagy-restoring small molecule aimed at Alzheimer's disease, entered a first-in-human Phase 1 trial in 2025. A 2026 raise valued Retro at $1.8 billion.
Joe Betts-LaCroix
Joe Betts-LaCroix is the co-founder and CEO of Retro Biosciences, a San Francisco longevity biotech on a mission to add 10 healthy years to the human lifespan. A scientist-turned-serial-entrepreneur who once held a Guinness World Record for building the world's smallest Windows PC, he now leads a company backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, valued at $1.8 billion in 2026, that has run an Alzheimer's clinical trial and co-developed a longevity-focused AI model with OpenAI. He came to biology by an unlikely route: a D-average high schooler who tinkered in shared houses, then earned straight A's, transferred to Harvard, and did research at MIT and Caltech before co-discovering principles of electron transfer in proteins.