Author: Biotech Metropolitan Women

Primary Bioscience is betting that single-molecule protein sequencing — not genomics — is the key to making multi-cancer early detection a clinical reality. CEO Stacy Anderson is building the hardware to prove it. The cancer diagnostics industry has spent the better part of a decade chasing the liquid biopsy dream through the lens of DNA. But inside CoMotion Labs, the University of Washington’s life science incubator in Seattle, a two-person startup is making the case that the real signal has been hiding in plain sight — not in the genome, but in the proteome. Primary Bioscience is developing a single-molecule…

Sabrina Martucci Johnson built Daré Bioscience around a simple but radical premise: women’s health is not a niche market. It’s a decade-long bet that is now beginning to pay out. THE GAP NO ONE WAS FILLING There is a drug that has been commercially available for nearly thirty years. It increases blood flow, improves physical response, and has been prescribed to tens of millions of patients. That drug is sildenafil — the active ingredient in Viagra — and until late 2025, not a single cGMP-manufactured, clinically studied topical formulation of it existed for women. That absence is not an accident…

For the roughly 300 million people worldwide living with a rare disease, the path to diagnosis has historically looked less like medicine and more like endurance. The average patient visits multiple physicians over a span of four to seven years before a cause is identified — a timeline that, for infants in neonatal intensive care units, can mean the difference between early intervention and permanent disability. Genomic sequencing has long promised to shorten that window. The question, consistently, has been whether the scientific infrastructure existed to do it at clinical scale. GeneDx has spent 25 years assembling an answer to…

Imagine waking up after five months of deep sleep — your heart beating just a handful of times per minute, your body temperature hovering just above freezing — and stepping outside feeling completely fine. No muscle loss. No organ damage. No cognitive fog. That is not a science fiction premise. That is Tuesday morning for a 13-lined ground squirrel in the American Midwest. Ashley Zehnder noticed this and asked a question that most researchers hadn’t thought to ask: if a squirrel’s heart can survive conditions that would kill a human, what does it know that we don’t? It was the…

Spinal fusion is one of the most performed surgical interventions in the United States, yet the core mechanics of its most critical step — discectomy — have remained stubbornly manual for decades. A surgeon performing a minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS TLIF) still relies on hand dexterity, physical endurance, and dozens of repeated instrument passes to clear a collapsed disc space — a process that, even under optimal conditions, achieves less than half of all disc fragment removal. The consequences of this gap are measurable. Incomplete discectomy correlates with fusion complications, prolonged operating times, higher radiation exposure, and…

The global infertility market runs on a paradox. Each year, clinicians perform more than 2.5 million IVF cycles worldwide, fine-tuning hormonal protocols, embryo selection, and laboratory conditions in pursuit of marginal gains in live birth rates. Yet a foundational biological variable—the composition of the vaginal microbiome at the time of embryo transfer—goes largely unaddressed in clinical practice. Dysbiosis in the reproductive tract has been linked to failed implantation and early pregnancy loss for nearly a decade, but the therapeutic response has been silence. No approved product exists to correct it. That absence is what Freya Biosciences is attempting to fill.…

For half a century, the dominant assumption in cell biology has been that understanding a cell requires marking it — fluorescent dyes, antibody tags, sequencing reads that consume or destroy the thing being studied before it can be fully known. Fluorescent labeling techniques carry well-documented constraints: fixation requirements that preclude live-cell observation, phototoxicity during prolonged imaging, and the fundamental problem that labeling a cell to study it changes the thing being studied. The logic is so deeply embedded in standard laboratory workflows that most researchers treat the trade-off as background noise: a cost of doing business in the molecular era.…

Artificial intelligence in drug discovery is no longer evaluated on novelty alone. The industry’s center of gravity has shifted toward integration—whether modeling systems converge with experimental biology in ways that materially influence translational durability rather than simply accelerate molecular generation. 1910 Genetics frames its strategy around that structural shift. The company describes its ITO™ discovery platform as a multimodal system combining AI modeling, robotics-enabled laboratory automation, and continuously generated biological datasets. Predictive speed has become baseline. Translational durability is becoming the differentiator. Rather than separating prediction from validation, the architecture is positioned as an iterative environment in which experimental output…

The promise of at-home diagnostics has been flirted with for more than a decade. From glucose monitors to mail-in microbiome kits, the thesis has been consistent: decentralize testing, reduce friction, improve access. But cervical cancer screening has remained stubbornly clinical. Now a new cohort of biotech-driven FemTech companies is attempting to close that gap — not through consumer wellness positioning, but through molecular diagnostics. Among them is Syrona Health, which describes on its website an at-home self-sampling approach for cervical cancer screening that involves laboratory analysis for high-risk HPV. The ambition is not simply convenience. It is structural. As the…

Two years ago, circular RNA was still easy to dismiss as a niche. In 2026, it’s harder — partly because the modality’s strongest advocates have built credible engineering stacks, and partly because big pharma has started to pay to own the upside. It was cataloged in sequencing datasets and dissected in mechanistic reviews, yet rarely surfaced in institutional pipelines. That equilibrium is shifting.As RNA therapeutics move beyond first‑generation mRNA, attention is migrating from expression speed to architectural control. CircNova is positioning itself squarely in that transition, framing NovaEngine as a sequence‑to‑structure design system intended to make circular RNA a programmable…

For more than a decade, the biotech industry has chased a seductive idea: that drug discovery could be transformed from an artisanal, hypothesis-driven process into something closer to an engineered system. Few companies have pursued that idea as visibly as Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a TechBio company that blends automated wet‑lab experimentation with machine learning in an attempt to industrialize biology itself. The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Automation generates massive volumes of biological data; machine learning models detect patterns that humans might miss; and the feedback loop between experimentation and computation accelerates the path from insight to medicine. In an era…

A marker-less approach to knee robotics is reframing a crowded field — and raising a bigger question about whether the future of surgical robotics is less hardware, not more. For most of the last decade, orthopedic robotics sold a simple promise: greater precision. The pitch worked. Hospitals invested, surgeons trained, and robotic-assisted joint replacement moved from futuristic concept to mainstream strategic priority. Yet inside operating rooms, a quieter conversation has been growing louder — precision alone may not be enough if systems add friction to already pressured workflows. That tension — between technical capability and operational simplicity — is expected…

From Intra-Cellular Therapies and Celmatix to Evvy, Gameto, Concarlo, and Twentyeight Health, six companies delivered FDA progress, clinical evidence, and pivotal execution. Biotech hubs like to narrate momentum. In 2025, a small set of women-founded and women-led companies in Greater New York did something more convincing: they produced outcomes that survived regulatory review, peer review, and market scrutiny. These were not stories built on platform ambition. They were built on labels expanded, trials advanced, data published, and companies absorbed at strategic scale. The defining signal of the year was execution rather than narrative: FDA label expansions, peer-reviewed outcomes, advancement into…

As gene therapy moves deeper into its second commercial decade, competitive advantage is shifting away from simple proof-of-concept toward control, durability, manufacturability, and repeatability. In that environment, MeiraGTx has increasingly been evaluated as a genetic medicines company built around a platform thesis rather than a single asset. The company’s strategy is anchored in two ideas that have become decisive in late-stage gene therapy: controlling biological output after dosing, and industrializing AAV supply so programs can survive the transition from specialty trials to real-world demand. By late 2025, that strategy is no longer just a narrative—recent announcements, operational updates, and peer-reviewed…

When Novartis agreed to acquire Avidity Biosciences for approximately $12 billion, it did more than stand as one of the largest RNA-focused acquisitions in recent years. The transaction sent a strong validation signal for antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates (AOCs) as an emerging modality—and cemented CEO Sarah Boyce’s status as one of the most prominent female leaders in modern biotechnology. In an industry long challenged by the delivery problem of RNA medicines, Avidity’s success reframed the conversation. Rather than asking whether oligonucleotides can reach muscle, the field is now asking how broadly AOC technology can be applied across neuromuscular and systemic diseases. From…

Insitro’s scientific thesis is deceptively simple: if human biology can be measured at sufficient scale and resolution, machine learning drug discovery can move from pattern recognition to causal, predictive science. What differentiates Insitro is not merely the application of algorithms, but the systematic construction of large, well-labeled human cellular datasets—generated in-house—designed explicitly for model learning rather than post hoc analysis. From Models to Medicines Insitro’s pipeline has matured beyond platform validation. Its most advanced programs span liver disease (including NASH), neurodegeneration, and cardiometabolic biology, with multiple assets progressing through preclinical development. These programs are built on iPSC disease models engineered…

CellFE is a biotechnology company based in Almeda, California that specializes in microfluidic-based cellular engineering, aiming to revolutionize cell therapy manufacturing by enhancing the delivery of gene-editing molecules into human cells. Co-founded by Alla Zamarayeva, Ph.D., who serves as the Chief Executive Officer, CellFE has developed innovative technology to improve the efficiency and scalability of cell therapies. ​The CellFE platform has applications in gene editing, cell therapy development, and manufacturing. Specifically, it enables efficient gene delivery, especially for large DNA sequences, and supports the development of T-cell therapies like CAR-T, as well as other cell therapies involving iPSCs and hematopoietic stem cells. …

Founded in 2019, PTM Therapeutics is a San Francisco-based, pre-clinical stage startup that strives to “develop therapeutics for the betterment of human health span and well-being.” They achieve this by harnessing antibody technology against post-translational modification (PTM) targets for gastrointestinal (GI) and oncology diseases. The company collaborates with the University of Michigan and Emory University to exclusively license these therapies to target conditions like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The company’s research revolves around the theory that PTMs are implicated in disease states. PTMs are chemical alterations made to proteins after they are synthesized in cells. These changes impact a protein’s…

This past November 2023, Obatala Sciences ™  announced the commercial launch of its ObaCell® Obesity-on-a-Chip Service, a bioengineered model of human adipose tissue. The product is a 96-well plate of 3D cells and culture media that reproduces the physiological environment of obese patients. This first-in-class technology hopes to reduce cost and resources associated with investigating metabolic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer. Obatala Sciences™ is a biotech company founded in 2017 in New Orleans with the mission of promoting diversity in clinical research. The company’s name stems from the West African mythology of the god Obatala who was said…

Amid the ongoing digitization of healthcare, digital therapeutics have gained popularity, with providers and payers increasingly offering these software-based therapies to patients. According to the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, digital therapeutics are health softwares that are intended to treat or alleviate disease, disorder, condition, or injury by generating and delivering evidence-based medical intervention that has demonstrable positive patient impact. The alliance also noted that the interventions are provided independently or alongside medications, devices, and other therapies. The digital therapeutics market is experiencing a surge, according to a recent report from Grand View Research. The market was valued at $5.09 billion in…

In September 2023, Moon Surgical, a robotics startup based in Paris and San Francisco, assisted in its first clinical procedure in the U.S. Dr. Steven Hodgett, Dr. Craig Morgenthal, and Dr. Alexander Rose used the technology to successfully perform sleeve gastrectomies at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida. Moon Surgical’s product, the Maestro system, is a two-arm robotic assistant that augments surgeon’s capabilities in the operating room by providing increased mobility and precision during minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures. The robot serves as an extra pair of hands by holding and manipulating surgical instruments and cameras, allowing surgeons to maintain focus on…

Prostate cancer is the second most common form of cancer affecting men in the United States – 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetimes. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2022, almost 268,490 new cases of prostate cancer will be detected, and more than 34,500 men will die of the disease. Approximately 3.1 million men in the United States currently identify as prostate cancer survivors. The disease develops more often in both African American men and in Caribbean men of African ancestry than in men of other races. Furthermore, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death…

Digital biotech company OccamzRazor recently raised $6.1MM in a series A funding round that closed in March 2022. The round was led by Jeff Dean, the head of Google AI, a division of Google dedicated to tackling healthcare problems and advancing scientific discovery by leveraging computer science. OccamzRazor is a biotech startup on a mission to cure brain aging through digital science. The company uses natural language processing, graph prediction, and graph machine learning to map out disease processes related to aging, such as Parkinson’s Disease. The company claims that human capacity is not sufficient to translate all the public…

According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime. Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers that can affect anyone with any skin color. Risk to skin cancer comes from exposure to natural and artificial ultraviolet light, unprotected skin and experiencing sunburns. Mortality rates from skin cancer are largely from melanoma. 20 Americans die every day from melanoma. Mortality rates vary among females, males, and age groups. Research shows men with melanoma have lower survival rates than women in the same age group. The five-year survival rate for…

At a time when most companies are challenged with planning their initial diversity and inclusion dialogues, The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) had already introduced their first black, woman CEO. She is the third chief executive of the organization that made their announcement on May 14, 2020 and Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath assumed this role as President and CEO on Jun1, 2020. Dr. McMurry-Heath succeeds Congressmen Jim Greenwood who stepped down in October rounding out his 14-year tenure leading the organization and lobbying to Congress to protect drug developers and promote innovation. BIO is the world’s largest science and public advocacy organization,…