Portal Biotechnologies is a Watertown, Massachusetts cell-engineering platform company building tools that push complex cargo - mRNA, siRNA, CRISPR complexes, proteins - into living cells by squeezing them through microscopic holes in a silicon surface, rather than relying on viruses or chemistry. Founded in 2023 by Armon Sharei, the MIT-trained scientist behind SQZ Biotechnologies, Portal sells hardware and consumables to drug discovery and cell therapy labs instead of developing its own drugs. Its instruments are used across more than 100 customer sites, including many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, and the company has raised seed and follow-on funding plus a DARPA contract for portable, point-of-care cell manufacturing.
Treeline Biosciences is a Watertown, Massachusetts biotech founded in 2021 by Loxo Oncology founder Josh Bilenker and former Novartis oncology head Jeff Engelman. It pairs in-house wet-lab R&D with leading-edge computational tools to invent cancer medicines reliably and repeatedly, choosing targets by what the technology can reach rather than by therapeutic fashion. After operating largely in stealth, Treeline has raised more than $1.1 billion and moved three programs - a BCL6 degrader, a pan-KRAS inhibitor, and an EZH2 inhibitor - into Phase 1 trials. In June 2026 it agreed to go public through an all-stock reverse merger with Standard BioTools, with the combined company set to trade on Nasdaq as 'TRLN'.