Biotechnology startups to watch in 2023
The past few years have been chaotic and unpredictable. While the biotechnology industry is no different, in 2021 the global market was valued at $1,023.93 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.11%. Every day, new businesses are launched in biotechnology, health sciences, and pharmaceuticals that are creating life-changing products and revolutionizing their industry.
2023 will be an exciting year for the biotechnology sector, here are some amazing organizations we see thriving that are developing new drugs, creating new treatments, and much more.
Alloy Therapeutics
Who They Are: Alloy Therapeutics develops, improves, licenses, and shares foundational, pre-competitive drug discovery technologies. They’ve recently closed a $42M Series D round of financing led by existing investors 8VC and Mubadala Capital as well as other venture capital firms, funds, and family offices. The funding will be used to further their research with new pre-competitive drug discovery technologies.
Location: Waltham, Massachusetts
Founding Date: 2017
Funding: $42M (Series D)
AlloVir
Who They Are: AlloVir develops off-the-shelf, highly innovative allogeneic, virus-specific T-cell (VST) therapies designed to prevent infectious diseases for patients. Their work is even more critical as patients with T-cell deficiencies are at risk of life-threatening consequences and are left with little to no options for treatment. They’ve recently expanded their Phase 3 study of posoleucel for the prevention of clinically significant infections and end-organ disease in high-risk allo-HCT patients. Multi-virus prevention has the potential to transform how allo-HCT patients are treated, who currently have limited to no approved treatment.
Location: Waltham, Massachusetts
Founding Date: 2013
Funding: $285.6M (Post-IPO Equity)
Cellarity
Who They Are: Cellarity was unsatisfied with the lack of predictiveness and excessive clinical failure rate of past drug creation processes, and because of this, they’re pioneering a new approach. They leverage single-cell technologies to identify the cause of a healthy cell transitioning to a disease-ridden cell. Doing this allows them to identify non-intuitive biology and treatments. In August of 2022, they released an open-source unique single-cell dataset to accelerate innovation in mapping multimodal genetic information across cell states and over time. Cellarity also recently announced a $121M Series C financing round led by Flagship Pioneering and other Series B investors, as well as new investors Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd. and Hanwha Impact Partners.
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Founding Date: 2017
Funding: $274M (Series C)
Gingko Bioworks
Who They Are: Ginkgo Bioworks is a self-proclaimed “organism company” using biology to grow the future. Products used across various industries for commercial applications are created by companies that leverage their platforms to design, develop, and optimize them. These products mighty include key ingredients for vaccines, crops that rely less on fossil fuel-based fertilizers, plant-based meat that tastes like the real thing, materials for the next generation of circular fashion, and so much more. In Q3 of 2022 Ginkgo added 15 new cell programs and $66M of total revenue in addition to the four acquisitions they closed including Bayer and Joyn to build their vertical capabilities in agricultural biologicals and Zymergen to bring in-house core hardware and software to accelerate their horizontal Foundry capabilities.
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Founding Date: 2009
Funding: $800.4M
Orna Therapeutics
Who They Are: Orna Therapeutics is revolutionizing RNA therapeutics by developing an entirely new technology, oRNA. These new molecules are engineered as linear RNAs that undergo highly-efficient autocatalytic circularization. Putting molecules through this process gives them multiple advantages over traditional linear mRNA therapies such as simplified production, increased protein expression, and immunoquiescence. Recently Orna announced a partnership with Merck to discover, develop, and commercialize multiple programs including vaccines and therapeutics in the areas of infectious diseases and oncology. In August 0f 2022, they closed a $221M Series B financing round.
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Founding Date: 2019
Funding: $321M (Series B)
What to expect in 2023
The startups mentioned throughout this article are all working towards changing the world through biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and therapies. Each is pushing the envelope in their respective industries by pioneering new products, treatments, and processes. This goes without saying, 2023 is looking bright for these biotech startups.
