Seed – IndieBio – #1 in Early Stage Biotech

mFluiDX

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:18 +0000

Three years before COVID made everyone care about rapid molecular diagnostics, mFluiDx was already working on it. They were fighting epidemics before it was cool. Their initial prototype, funded by The Gates Foundation and DARPA, was working on rapid diagnostics for Zika virus. When patients would normally have to wait for days to get a result. mFluiDx’s prototype offered them an accurate diagnosis faster than a Spanish siesta, and 100X cheaper than a PCR setup.

mFluiDx presents a fast and portal DNA-based technology for identifyuing outbreaks of dangerous diseases in the field. Using microfluidics, they’ve engineered a field-ready, affordable, sensitive, and rapid approach that democratizes high-need diagnostics for everyone in the world.

mFluiDx selected as one of the top 20 startups to pitch at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, from a pool of 900 startups globally.

Indee Labs

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:16 +0000

With their microvortex shedding technology, Indee Labs’ cell engineering platform preserves cell function while boasting high recovery efficiencies and each 5 x 10mm chip can process >50 million cells at >2-4 million cells per second and as low as 100uL in processing volume.

This matters to the population of patients who today cannot afford cell therapy due to the high cost associated with their production. With this system, the ability to engineer T-cells rapidly and more efficiently will make cell therapies more accesible.

Girihlet

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:16 +0000

The complexity and growing prevalence of autoimmune disorders demands attention. Baked into our immune cells are records of the interplay between the genome, diet, and the environment.

Girihlet’s patented approach to sequencing T-cell receptors (TCR) unlocks these complex interactions by classifying TCRs into actionable biomarkers to diagnose and identify treatment avenues for autoimmune diseases.

Circularis

Dmitry Paperny — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:14 +0000

Circularis’s technology screens a huge library of promoters in a single cell. Through directed evolution selection, the strongest promoters rise to the top and can be identified and incorporated into a host of gene expression applications, such as biomanufacturing and gene therapy. Beyond just promoters, their technology also works for enhancers, silencers/repressers, stability sequences, and nuclear delivery sequences. The process happens within days, instead of months.

AnimalBiome

Dmitry Paperny — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:11 +0000

AnimalBiome creates microbiome-based therapeutics to treat the more than 9 million cats and dogs in the US living with chronic digestive disorders. They have developed a patent pending process for creating a fecal microbiota transplant pill that is stable at room temperature and highly effective. Animal Microbiome has been treating cats and dogs for more than 3 years and over 90% have shown a decrease in the frequency of diarrhea, vomiting, and/or constipation. In the course of creating this product, they have also created the world’s largest database of microbiome samples in the order Carnivora, and are leverage this database to create next generation probiotics and veterinary diagnostics.

CASPR Biotech

Dmitry Paperny — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:05 +0000

What do you do when all the Cas proteins get locked up in IP because of the CRISPR war? You go to the ends of the earth to find an undiscovered Cas protein. And that’s what the Caspr team did, traveling to high-altitude mountains and volcanoes to find extremophiles in Argentina where there might be a Cas protein whose upbringing might endow them with temperature resistance.

Caspr has been acquired by a Fortune 100 company. Now Caspr is using their special Cas to develop cheap and rapid CRISPR-based test kits ƒor infectious diseases. One month after they graduated from IndieBio, COVID-19 hit and Caspr’s team knew exactly what they had to do. They flew out their scientists out of Argentina to come live in San Francisco, where 15 of them lived in a single house in Alamo Square, all trying to develop tests for the coronavirus.

After demonstrating how rapidly they were able to develop their tests, Caspr was approached by Amazon to help with their internal efforts to test their employees.

New Culture

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:03 +0000

When we think of pizza, we think of gooey, melty, stretchy cheese. Unfortunately vegan cheese has not delivered. The texture is nowhere near as stretchy and doesn’t satisfy any foodie trying to replace their dairy cheese.

New Culture is making a meltable, stretchable cheese with the mouthfeel of cow-based mozzarella, by employing traditional cheesemaking techniques. In a manner similar to another key cheese-making ingredient, rennet, New Culture set about to eliminate cows from its cheese by wrangling microbial fermentation to produce caseins. These difficult-to-make proteins are the critical molecules that bring about that stretchy texture that makes cheese so cheesy.

NovoNutrients

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:03 +0000

As the world’s population continues to balloon, demand for seafood is going with it. Aquaculture is the primary method to meet demand, but relies on feeding billions of small fish to larger fish. A process that is inherently unsustainable and is only getting worse as ocean fish supply dwindles. C.E.O. David Tze started his journey investing in an aquaculture investment management company, when he saw the need for a growing food and protein supply.

NovoNutrients is looking to solve this problem with a radically different approach, growing high-quality bacterial protein from waste carbon dioxide. Their microbes break down industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and reassemble them into low-cost and nutrient-rich aquaculture feed and specialty ingredients, which sequesters the pollution and turns it into high-value proteins.

Membio

bifrost — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:09:01 +0000

Membio is developing a world class biomanufacturing platform to enable the cost-effective and scalable production of whole cells, including red blood cells. Blood is a necessary prerequisite for many life-saving interventions, making a reliable blood supply an essential part of any healthcare system. Membio is on a mission to provide the world with a safe and sustainable supply of blood.

GateHouse Bio (fka sRNAlytics)

Dmitry Paperny — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:08:57 +0000

When your cells make instructions in the form of mRNAs, there are also many small RNAs (sRNAs) that regulate those instructions. They regulate the health and disease of all living things, and researchers are now finding out that their activity patterns are indicative of overall patterns in the body.

Turns out, this is a good strategy for biomarker discovery. Gatehouse developed an RNA analytics platform intended to classify patient samples with binary accuracy. The company’s platform identifies small RNA biomarkers and discovers molecular pathways of disease through deep analysis of small RNAs and accelerates the development of targeted therapies, enabling custom bio-markers and companion diagnostics driving cures.