Tim Lu

Engine Biosciences is a venture-backed San Francisco- and Asia-based technology company pioneering network biomedicine. Our proprietary and patented technologies oriented around deciphering the complexity of biology networks include both high-throughput wet lab experimentation and artificial intelligence algorithms for drug discovery and cellular reprogramming. This platform, developed through several years of research by our scientific founding and leadership team who include faculty members at MIT, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, and UCSD, dramatically accelerates and reduces costs of the R&D process for new medical therapies. We are actively applying the platform internally and with partners across a range of disease indications. In January 2018, we announced the closing of a US$10M seed round from notable biotech and tech institutional investors and are expanding the team.

On February 10, 2023, Corvium assets were acquired by NEOGEN Corporation. The Corvium software, now marketed by NEOGEN as “Neogen Analytics”, enables remote monitoring and management of food safety testing and sanitation workflows, and delivers a broad range of analytics and auto-alerting features. The technology does this by providing real-time factual information regarding the changing risk status based on testing and monitoring data. Neogen Analytics automates EMP, Product Testing and Sanitation programs across all of a food supplier’s facilities, allowing remote access and management from any browser enabled device. The integrated analytics engine aggregates and provides visualization for all relevant information, while continuously monitoring data flows and providing tailor-made and up-to-date alerts regarding food safety performance across the enterprise.

Tango Therapeutics is a biotechnology company discovering and developing novel medicines targeting cancer vulnerabilities to deliver transformational new therapies for patients. Tango was launched in 2017 with a $55 million Series A investment from Third Rock Ventures. The company has established a robust product engine that leverages advances in DNA sequencing and CRISPR-based target discovery to generate breakthrough medicines that have the potential to provide deeper, more sustained benefit than today’s targeted therapies, and extend the benefit of available immuno-oncology agents. Tango Therapeutics is focused on three areas of drug development, each in well-defined patient populations currently lacking effective treatment options, and each with hallmarks of cancer that have not been targeted yet. These include: loss of tumor suppressor gene function; multiple oncogenic drivers; and immune evasion. What fuels each of Tango’s programs is an increasingly sophisticated ability to utilize synthetic lethality - the interaction between two genes that causes cell death when both are inactivated. In cancer cells, one of these genes is inactivated by mutation; the other will be inactivated by a drug. This approach leaves normal cells largely unaffected, with the potential to greatly enhance anti-tumor efficacy and reduce associated toxicity. Tango’s success will be driven by its depth of understanding of the genetic subtypes of cancer, and corresponding insights into novel drug targets and combinations uniquely relevant to each subtype. By shaping discovery efforts in this way, Tango has the potential to reach the clinic quickly, and with a clear plan for identifying the patients most likely to benefit from each new treatment, an approach that could increase both speed and probability of success in translating novel target discoveries into transformational new medicines for patients.

Our mission is to create a new generation of smarter medicines that outmaneuver complex diseases in ways previously inconceivable. To accomplish this mission, we are building a synthetic biology platform that could enable us to program next-generation cell and gene therapies with what we refer to as “gene circuits”. These gene circuits, which are created from novel and proprietary combinations of DNA sequences, are intended to reprogram cells with biological logic to sense inputs, compute decisions and respond to their cellular environments. We are designing gene circuits to improve the “intelligence” of cell and gene therapies in order to enhance their therapeutic effectiveness against a broad range of diseases that conventional medicines do not readily address. For more information, please visit the Senti Bio website at https://www.sentibio.com.

Engine Biosciences is a venture-backed San Francisco- and Asia-based technology company pioneering network biomedicine. Our proprietary and patented technologies oriented around deciphering the complexity of biology networks include both high-throughput wet lab experimentation and artificial intelligence algorithms for drug discovery and cellular reprogramming. This platform, developed through several years of research by our scientific founding and leadership team who include faculty members at MIT, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, and UCSD, dramatically accelerates and reduces costs of the R&D process for new medical therapies. We are actively applying the platform internally and with partners across a range of disease indications. In January 2018, we announced the closing of a US$10M seed round from notable biotech and tech institutional investors and are expanding the team.

Synlogic is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a new class of biotherapeutics through its proprietary approach to synthetic biology. Synlogic’s pipeline includes its lead program in phenylketonuria (PKU) and additional novel drug candidates designed to treat homocystinuria (HCU), enteric hyperoxaluria (EH), and gout. The rapid advancement of these potential biotherapeutics, called Synthetic Biotics, has been enabled by Synlogic’s proprietary, reproducible, target-specific drug design. Synlogic uses programmable, precision genetic engineering of well-characterized probiotics to exert localized activity for therapeutic benefit, with a focus on metabolic and immunologic diseases. Synlogic also has research collaborations established with Roche and Ginkgo Bioworks.