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Brian Slingerland's Long Game Started With a Craigslist Ad
A finance graduate answered a housing problem with a classified ad and found a scientist instead. Two decades later, Brian Slingerland is still building companies where business discipline meets difficult biology.
Aetna Trombley Chose the Long Route to a New Kind of Biotech
She spent nine years helping build NGM, then left for science compelling enough to begin again. At Lycia Therapeutics, Aetna Trombley has made patience, partnerships and protein clearance into an operating strategy.
CompareNetworks, Inc.
CompareNetworks, Inc. is a South San Francisco-based B2B media and technology company that helps science, laboratory, and healthcare professionals stay informed, discover products, and make purchasing decisions. Through vertical marketplaces such as Biocompare, Labcompare, Dentalcompare, and American Pharmaceutical Review, it connects buyers with manufacturers using searchable product directories, editorial content, email, video, and print - generating qualified sales leads for science and healthcare brands.
CytomX Therapeutics
CytomX Therapeutics is a clinical-stage, oncology-focused biopharmaceutical company in South San Francisco that engineers conditionally activated antibody therapeutics through its proprietary PROBODY platform. By masking a drug's binding site and unmasking it only in the tumor microenvironment - where specific proteases cut a cleavable linker - CytomX aims to hit cancer targets that are otherwise too toxic to drug, widening the therapeutic window for antibody-drug conjugates, T-cell engagers and cytokines. Its wholly owned pipeline is led by CX-2051, an EpCAM-targeting PROBODY ADC for metastatic colorectal cancer, alongside masked interferon CX-801 and T-cell engager CX-904, and it partners its technology with Amgen, Astellas, Bristol Myers Squibb, Moderna and Regeneron.
Chariot Defense
Chariot Defense is a South San Francisco defense-technology company building hybrid-electric power systems for the battlefield. Its Amphora platform delivers quiet, high-density, software-controlled power to distributed military hardware - drones, sensors, radios, electronic-warfare and directed-energy systems - so that energy never becomes the limiting factor in a fight. Founded in 2024 by former Anduril and Archer engineer Adam Warmoth, the company raised a $34M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in February 2026, bringing total funding to roughly $41-42M, and has fielded its systems with the U.S. Army and the Defense Innovation Unit.
IgGenix, Inc.
IgGenix is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in South San Francisco developing fully human, allergen-specific antibody therapeutics for severe food and environmental allergies. Its proprietary SEQ SIFTER single-cell RNA-sequencing platform isolates the rare IgE-producing B cells behind allergic reactions and re-engineers them into protective IgG antibodies designed to block the allergic cascade. The lead candidate, IGNX001, is in a Phase 1 trial for peanut allergy.
SonoThera
SonoThera is a South San Francisco biotech developing an ultrasound-guided, nonviral platform for delivering genetic medicines. Instead of the viral vectors that dominate gene therapy, it uses focused ultrasound and injectable microbubbles - a process called sonoporation - to open transient pores in target cells and shuttle DNA or RNA payloads into specific organs. The pitch is delivery that is targeted, potentially redosable, and decoupled from the immune and manufacturing headaches of viruses. The company raised a $125M Series B in June 2026 and is pushing lead programs in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and polycystic kidney disease toward the clinic.
Zenflow, Inc.
Zenflow is a South San Francisco medical device company that built the Spring, a small nitinol coil implanted through a flexible cystoscope to prop open the urethra and relieve the symptoms of an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia). Spun out of Stanford's Biodesign program in 2014, the company won FDA approval in December 2025 for a first-line interventional therapy that requires no catheter afterward, preserves sexual function, and can be reversed. It has raised roughly $85 million across multiple rounds and ran the multinational BREEZE pivotal trial to get there.
Ridge Bio
Ridge Biotechnologies is a Bay Area startup using AI-driven enzyme and targeted drug design to build the next generation of precision medicines. Its platform pairs proprietary machine learning models with high-throughput, cell-free wet-lab experimentation to design enzymes and delivery systems for applications spanning antibody-drug conjugates, in vivo CAR-T, targeted nucleic acid delivery, biocatalysis and radiotherapies. The company emerged from stealth in September 2025 with an oversubscribed $25 million seed round led by Sutter Hill Ventures.
Gordian Biotechnology
Gordian Biotechnology is a South San Francisco in vivo drug discovery company building a high-throughput screening platform that tests hundreds of gene therapies simultaneously inside animals that naturally develop age-related diseases. By pairing 'patient avatar' models with single-cell transcriptomics and machine learning (a stack the company calls Mosaic Screening + Pythia), Gordian aims to predict human clinical outcomes earlier and cure complex diseases of aging.
InterVenn Biosciences
InterVenn Biosciences is a South San Francisco biotech building an AI-driven glycoproteomics platform that reads the sugar coatings on proteins to detect disease earlier. Its flagship blood test, GlycoKnow Ovarian, distinguishes ovarian cancer from benign pelvic masses with ~86% accuracy and went commercial in 2025. Founded in 2017 by Aldo Carrascoso with chemists Carolyn Bertozzi (Nobel Laureate) and Carlito Lebrilla, the company has raised roughly $244M, including a $201M Series C led by SoftBank in 2021.
Lycia Therapeutics
Lycia Therapeutics is a South San Francisco biotech building lysosomal targeting chimeras (LYTACs) - bifunctional molecules that drag disease-driving extracellular and membrane proteins into the cell's lysosomes for destruction. Founded in 2019 out of the lab of Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, Lycia is advancing a pipeline of autoimmune and inflammatory disease therapies, backed by $226M+ in venture capital and a strategic discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly.
Trace Neuroscience
Trace Neuroscience is a South San Francisco biopharmaceutical company developing genomic medicines for neurodegenerative diseases, starting with ALS. Its lead program, TRCN-1023, is an antisense oligonucleotide designed to restore UNC13A protein function - a target genetically validated in roughly 97% of people living with ALS - by correcting the faulty RNA splicing caused by TDP-43 dysfunction. The company launched in November 2024 with a $101 million Series A led by Third Rock Ventures and entered the clinic in 2026.
Theravance Biopharma US, LLC
Theravance Biopharma is a South San Francisco biopharmaceutical company built around a focused respiratory franchise. Its flagship product, YUPELRI (revefenacin), is the first and only once-daily nebulized long-acting muscarinic antagonist approved in the U.S. for COPD maintenance, commercialized with partner Viatris. Spun out of Innoviva in 2014 and trading on Nasdaq as TBPH, the company combines a profitable marketed product with high-value royalty assets - including a now-monetized stake in GSK's TRELEGY - and runs a lean, capital-disciplined model rather than chasing scale.
Scott Greenberg
Scott Greenberg is the Chief Business Officer of Nura Bio, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in South San Francisco building small-molecule drugs to stop nerves from dying. He joined in February 2025 to steer business development and corporate strategy as the company pushes its lead SARM1 inhibitor, NB-4746, into the clinic. He arrives with more than two decades crossing the line between finance and biology - a Goldman Sachs banking start, more than a decade at Celgene, an operations leadership role at Roivant Sciences, and a stint as Chief Operating Officer at Aro Biotherapeutics. He studied both Finance and the Biological Basis of Behavior at the University of Pennsylvania before an MBA at Harvard.
Arsenal Biosciences, Inc.
Arsenal Biosciences (ArsenalBio) is a clinical-stage, programmable cell therapy company in South San Francisco engineering CAR-T cell therapies for solid tumors. By combining CRISPR genome engineering, synthetic biology, high-throughput target discovery and machine learning, it builds 'integrated circuit T cells' that carry logic gates and multiple drug functions to attack tumors while sparing healthy tissue. Founded in 2019 by surgeon-executive Ken Drazan with leading academic immunologists, the company has raised roughly $850M total, including an oversubscribed $325M Series C in 2024 backed by ARCH, NVIDIA's NVentures, Regeneron Ventures and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Atomic AI
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.
Circle Pharma, Inc.
Circle Pharma is a South San Francisco biotechnology company building intrinsically cell-permeable, orally available macrocycle therapeutics to hit cancer targets long considered undruggable. Spun out of UCSF and UC Santa Cruz in 2012, it pairs structure-based design, AI/ML, physics-based simulation, and advanced synthetic chemistry in its proprietary MXMO platform. Its lead program, CID-078, is a first-in-class oral cyclin A/B RxL inhibitor now in a Phase 1 trial for advanced solid tumors. The company has raised more than $200 million in total funding, including a $90 million Series D in 2024.
Andrei Georgescu
Andrei Georgescu is the co-founder and CEO of Vivodyne, a biotech company that grows human tissues in the lab and runs drugs through them with robots and AI before any human ever swallows a pill. A University of Pennsylvania bioengineering PhD who once sent lab-grown tissue to space with NASA, he started Vivodyne in 2020 because roughly 19 of every 20 drugs that work in animals fail in people. His pitch is blunt: test human medicine on human tissue, not on mice. In May 2025 Vivodyne raised a $40 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures to scale a 23,000-square-foot fully robotic lab in South San Francisco.
David Earp
David J. Earp is the President and CEO of Circle Pharma, a South San Francisco clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company building orally available macrocycle drugs aimed at cancer targets long deemed undruggable. A biochemist turned patent lawyer turned chief executive, Earp holds a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge and a JD from Lewis & Clark, and has led Circle since 2013, steering it through a $90M Series D, a $607M collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, and the first human dosing of its lead cyclin A/B inhibitor CID-078.
Noetik
Noetik is an AI-native biotechnology company building foundation models of human cancer biology to discover precision immunotherapies. It pairs one of the world's largest proprietary spatial-omics datasets - hundreds of millions of spatially resolved tumor and immune cells - with a high-throughput in vivo CRISPR Perturb-Map platform to train multimodal virtual cell models like OCTO-VC. These models simulate gene expression, cell states, and tumor-immune interactions, letting researchers find drug targets and predict patient response computationally. Founded in 2022 by former Recursion leaders Ron Alfa and Jacob Rinaldi, Noetik has raised roughly $62M and licenses its models to pharma, including an anchor partnership with GSK.
Nura Bio
Nura Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in South San Francisco developing brain-penetrant, small-molecule neuroprotective medicines. Its work centers on SARM1, an injury-activated NAD hydrolase that triggers axon degeneration, an early and common event across many neurological diseases. The lead candidate, NB-4746, is an oral, brain-penetrant SARM1 inhibitor that completed Phase 1 in healthy volunteers and shows protection in preclinical models of ALS, MS, traumatic brain injury and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. The company has raised more than $140 million in Series A financing led by The Column Group.
Gajus Worthington
Gajus Worthington is a life sciences entrepreneur, engineer, and inventor who turned an idea for circuits that move fluid instead of electrons into Fluidigm, a microfluidics company he co-founded in 1999 and led as CEO through its IPO and years as a public company. Today he is Chairman and CEO of Superfluid Dx, a South San Francisco company building a blood test that reads cell-free messenger RNA from the brain to diagnose Alzheimer's disease earlier and more precisely. Between those chapters he served as COO of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, co-founded Kaizen Therapeutics and the ML/AI healthcare company StatOS, and became a Managing Partner at WRQ Sciences.
Ken Drazan
Ken Drazan is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Arsenal Biosciences (ArsenalBio), a South San Francisco clinical-stage company building computationally designed, programmable T-cell therapies to attack solid tumors. A board-certified liver transplant surgeon turned operator and investor, he previously was President and Chief Business Officer of GRAIL (acquired by Illumina), founded the robotic surgery company Verb Surgical (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), and co-founded the private equity firm Bertram Capital. At ArsenalBio he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and forged collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb and Genentech, betting that gene-edited 'integrated circuit' T cells - and an AI foundation model of the T cell - can turn cell therapy into something curative for cancers that have resisted it.
Verge Genomics
Verge Genomics is a South San Francisco biotech that builds drugs from human biology instead of mouse models. By assembling one of the largest proprietary multi-omics datasets drawn directly from human brain and tissue samples, then mining it with machine learning, its CONVERGE platform identifies disease targets and drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, ALS-FTD and Parkinson's. Founded in 2015 by Alice Zhang and Jason Chen, the company famously moved its first AI-discovered drug from research to the clinic in four years. After that ALS candidate failed its early trial, Verge has refocused on its core asset, the platform, repositioning to supply other drug developers with human-grounded target data.
Shilpa Sambashivan
Shilpa Sambashivan is the CEO and a co-founder of Nura Bio, a South San Francisco biotech building brain-penetrant small molecules that aim to stop nerves from dying. A protein biochemist by training, she helped spin the company out of academic labs in 2018, built its R&D engine as Chief Scientific Officer, and was elevated to CEO in September 2024 alongside a $68M Series A extension that pushed total funding past $140M. Her lead drug, NB-4746, blocks the SARM1 enzyme that triggers axon self-destruction.
Cellares
Cellares is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) for cell therapy. Its Cell Shuttle - a fully automated, high-throughput platform roughly the size of a small conference room - replaces a warren of manual labs with one box that can run 16 patient batches in parallel, cutting labor and facility footprint by about 90 percent.
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.
Frontier Medicines
Frontier Medicines is a precision-medicine biotech using chemoproteomics, covalent chemistry, and machine learning to drug proteins long considered 'undruggable.' Its lead candidate, FMC-376, is a first-in-class dual ON/OFF inhibitor of KRAS G12C now in the Phase 1/2 PROSPER trial. Backed by $315M+ in venture funding and a major AbbVie partnership, the company is one of the most-watched names in next-generation targeted cancer therapy.
insitro
insitro is a machine-learning-driven drug discovery and development company that uses high-content human data, cellular models and AI to find better targets and design better medicines. Founded in 2018 by Daphne Koller, the company runs its own therapeutic pipeline and partners with large pharma on programs in ALS, metabolic disease and oncology.