stem-cell-therapy
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Gabriel Tremblay
Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay is the CEO and co-founder of HexemBio, a New York and Berkeley biotech building what it calls the first scalable blood stem cell rejuvenation therapy. A synthetic biologist with a PhD from UBC and a postdoc at UC Berkeley, he is a two-time founder and Y Combinator alumnus who earlier co-founded the cultivated-meat startup Orbillion Bio. At HexemBio he turns aged hematopoietic stem cells young again by passing them through a recreated embryonic 'Synthetic Yolk Sac' before returning them by IV. The company closed a $10.4M seed round led by Draper Associates in April 2026 and is targeting first-in-human trials by 2027.
Nate Beyor
Nate Beyor is Chief Business Officer at Salt AI, the Los Angeles contextual-AI platform built for life sciences and healthcare. A bioengineer turned consultant turned operator, he holds a PhD in bioengineering from UC Berkeley, where he built microfluidic devices to detect pathogens. He spent his career at the seam between technology and biology - microfluidics, biologics manufacturing, stem cell therapy at Asterias Biotherapeutics, and digital health - before leading the Health Tech practice as a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group. At Salt AI he runs corporate strategy, the solutions portfolio, and market expansion, helping translational scientists and drug developers move faster with AI they can actually trust in regulated settings.
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.