Cambridge startup GentiBio has announced a collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to develop new engineered Treg (regulatory T cell) therapies for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Tregs, formerly known as suppressor T cells, are a subpopulation of T cells that modulate the immune system, maintain tolerance to self-antigens, and prevent autoimmune disease. The collaboration brings together GentiBio’s proprietary engineered Treg platform for generating […]

Waltham-based ElevateBio has formed a new company – as yet un-named – co-founded by George Daley, M.D, Ph.D., and Boston Children’s Hospital to develop cell therapies based on a novel platform that generates functionally mature immune cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The new process overcomes the tendency of iPSCs to generate immature, embryonic […]

Boston’s Ginkgo Bioworks has announced it will acquire California biotech Zymergen in an all-stock transaction that values Zymergen at an approximately $300 million market capitalization. The transaction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2023. Ginkgo’s platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to […]

Proving that it’s not just the summer weather that’s hot, local biopharms continue to attract millions in funding. Case in point, Cambridge-based CAMP4 Therapeutics recently closed a $100 million Series B round to advance its lead regRNA (regulatory RNA) programs. regRNAs are considered to be part of the “dark side of the genome,” the 98% […]

London-based artificial intelligence lab DeepMind Technologies and the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-EBI) have predicted the three-dimensional structures of nearly all proteins known to science and made the information freely and openly available to the scientific community via the AlphaFold protein structure database. The database is being expanded approximately 200 […]

In spite of the summer doldrums, local startups continue to attract funding. Cambridge-based immuno-oncology company DEM BioPharma recently launched with $70 million in financing. The company is pioneering immunotherapeutics designed to unleash macrophages and other myeloid effector cells to eliminate tumors by targeting novel ‘don’t eat me’ (DEM) and ‘eat me’ (EM) signals on cancer […]

Boston-based, biotech-focused venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures has raised $1.1 billion for its new Fund VI. Third Rock employs a hands-on approach to partnering with founders to build companies and provides early and rigorous integration of science, medicine, business and strategy to build successful companies. To date, Third Rock has raised $3.8 billion and […]