Plexium is a San Diego precision medicine company designing small-molecule protein degraders - monovalent direct degraders and molecular glues - that switch off disease-driving proteins traditionally considered undruggable. Its DELTA Discovery platform runs ultra-high-throughput cell-based screening to find and optimize new degrader chemistry across cancer and neurological disease.
Atomic AI is a South San Francisco biotechnology company fusing machine learning with structural biology to unlock RNA drug discovery. Its platform pairs in-house wet-lab chemical-mapping data with deep learning models - including ATOM-1, a foundation model for RNA structure, and PARSE, its RNA structure exploration platform - to find structured, ligandable RNA motifs and design selective small molecules and RNA-based medicines for targets long considered undruggable.
Autobahn Therapeutics is a San Diego clinical-stage biotech building small-molecule medicines that reach the brain on purpose. Using a brain-targeting chemistry and prodrug platform, the company tunes where a drug goes - central versus peripheral - to unlock validated CNS biology that has been hard to drug safely. Its lead program, elunetirom (ABX-002), is an oral, once-daily, brain-penetrant CNS thyroid hormone receptor agonist in Phase 2 trials for major depressive disorder and bipolar depression, backed by more than $200 million in venture funding and a 2026 FDA Fast Track designation.
Avelos Therapeutics is a Seoul-based clinical-stage oncology biotech founded in 2021 that designs small-molecule drugs for 'undruggable' cancer targets using synthetic lethality, DNA damage response (DDR), and cell-cycle biology. Its lead program, AD1208, is a first-in-class oral MASTL kinase inhibitor now in a Phase 1/2a solid-tumor trial. Backed by KRW 30 billion (~$21.7M) across seed, Series A, and a 2024 Series B, the roughly nine-person team is building a biomarker-driven pipeline of four anti-cancer candidates aimed at a future KOSDAQ listing.
Cajal Therapeutics (originally launched as Cajal Neuroscience) is a Seattle biotechnology company developing novel medicines to restore biological homeostasis, with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases, anemias of inflammation, and iron-related disorders. Built on a platform that pairs integrative human genetics, high-throughput functional genomics, and industrialized whole-brain imaging with deep neuroscience expertise, the company aims to systematically validate disease targets at unprecedented scale and translate them into small molecule and RNA therapeutics. It launched in November 2022 with a $96 million Series A and counts a roster of celebrated neuroscientists among its co-founders.
Delphia Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech pioneering a new field of cancer biology it calls activation lethality - the idea that cancer cells with oncogenic mutations live dangerously close to the upper limit of how much pathway activity they can tolerate, and can be pushed past it. Rather than blocking cancer signals like most drugs, Delphia designs targeted activators that overload cancer's stress pathways until the cell dies, aiming for durable benefit and a way around drug resistance. Founded in 2024 by Kevin Marks, Bill Sellers and Mike Dillon, it launched with a $67 million Series A led by GV, Nextech Invest, Polaris Innovation Fund and Alexandria Venture Investments.
Edgewood Oncology is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing BTX-A51, a first-in-class oral small-molecule multi-kinase inhibitor that co-targets casein kinase 1 alpha (CK1α) and cyclin-dependent kinases 7 and 9 (CDK7/CDK9) - three master regulators of cancer cell survival and transcription. Founded by veteran biotech executive David N. Cook and emerging from stealth in March 2024 with $20M in Series A financing from Alta Partners, the company is advancing BTX-A51 through Phase 2a trials in relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia and genetically-defined (GATA3-mutant) ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer.
Gate Bioscience is a Brisbane, California biotech building a brand-new class of medicines it calls Molecular Gates: oral small molecules that stop disease-causing proteins from ever leaving the cell. Instead of chasing proteins after they are secreted into the body, Gate's drugs bind Sec61, the single channel every one of the roughly 4,000 human secreted and membrane proteins must pass through, and selectively block a target protein so the cell degrades it. Founded in 2021 and emerged from stealth in 2023 with $60M, the company has raised about $135M total and is pushing its lead programs toward IND-enabling studies and Phase 1 trials.
Keythera (Suzhou) Biopharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biotech building first-in-class small molecule drugs for cancer and autoimmune disease. Its core edge is ADMS - Affinity Detection by Mass Spectroscopy - an affinity-based high-throughput screening platform that can screen up to 250,000 compounds per day per workstation and fuses bioinformatics, structural chemistry, computer-aided drug design and AI to find and optimize drug candidates faster and at lower risk. Founded in 2020 by industry veteran Dr. Yongqi Deng, the company has built six pipelines, advanced its lead EP4 antagonist KF-0210 into the clinic, and raised roughly RMB 100M in Series A funding.
Excelsior Sciences is a New York City biotech building 'machine-native chemistry' - a way to make small molecules that machines can execute and AI can learn from. Its proprietary smart bloccs platform turns drug synthesis into a modular, automation-friendly, iterative process, closing the loop between AI-driven discovery and real-world manufacturing. Founded in 2024 and spun out of Deerfield Management, the company raised $95M in late 2025 to scale the platform and reshore U.S. drug discovery and production.
Inductive Bio is a New York-based AI company building a machine learning platform that predicts how small-molecule drugs will behave in the body before they are ever synthesized. By training models on a pre-competitive data consortium shared across biopharma teams, its Beacon models, Compass software, and Indy chemistry assistant help medicinal chemists nominate better development candidates faster - reducing the costly 'whack-a-mole' of balancing potency against ADMET properties in preclinical drug discovery.
Margo Georgiadis is CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering and co-founder & CEO of Montai Therapeutics, a biotech company using AI to discover drugs from natural compounds humans have consumed for centuries. A Harvard double-alumna (Phi Beta Kappa undergrad, Baker Scholar MBA), she has reinvented herself across industries - from McKinsey partner to Google Americas President, Mattel CEO, Ancestry.com CEO (overseeing its $5B sale to Blackstone), and now biotech pioneer building a platform that turns ancient botanicals and foods into precision medicines for chronic disease.