Meet the 2023 FAST Fall cohort of companies! FAST California provides early-stage first-time founders of disruptive innovative life science technology companies with a customized advisory program to perfect their business models, assess strategic focus, maximize IP and help develop a milestone and scale-up plan to exit. A group of curated advisors, each with deep domain expertise, will work with them over twelve weeks to build a compelling commercialization strategy and prepare them for an Innovation Showcase to a curated audience of potential investors and collaboration partners. The CLS FAST program is open to companies that have no more than 12 employees, have raised less than $5 million, are precommercial, and are developing highly innovative, impactful products.

Aluda

Aluda is focused on the discovery of novel first-in-class target biology and created vimentin targeting small molecules that show the ability to address severe and complex multi-feature disease in new ways. Lead ALD-R491 generated high and consistent efficacy data across severe autoimmune and fibrotic diseases along with broad and comprehensive safety data and will initiate a Phase 1a/2b in 2024.

BioDrive

We have a platform that will allow for sustainable production of high-value molecules in plant tissue and our first target is an incretin mimetic expressed and delivered in lettuce to enable oral delivery, increase scale of production, and extend shelf life over injectable formulations targeted for the weight loss market.

BioMed

BIOMED is a pioneering biotechnology company leveraging AI, 3D bioprinting, and Big Data to deliver personalized medicine, addressing the health gap by optimizing dosages and treatments tailored to individual profiles, revolutionizing healthcare outcomes, and reducing inefficiencies.

Bio Superior

BioSuperior Technology is a preclinical stage biotherapeutics company developing innovative therapeutics for the treatment of serious respiratory disease based on a unique drug delivery platform.

Endure Bio

Endure Biotherapeutics (“Endure Bio”®) is developing engineered engraftable live biotherapeutics for metabolic diseases by genetically engineering human native bacteria to express therapeutic compounds. Endure’s advantage is its Engineered Native Bacteria (ENB) platform technology.

EV Therapeutics

EV Therapeutics is a pre-clinical company developing extracellular vesicle-based therapeutic cancer vaccines to help patients qualify for checkpoint inhibitor therapy in gastrointestinal cancers.

Immunowork

ImmunoWork, a BioMed start-up company, develops personalized diagnostics and targeted therapy for autoimmune diseases.

Jacaranda Biosciences

Jacaranda Biosciences, Inc. is developing unfolded protein response (UPR) modulating compounds to prevent, halt and/or mitigate the progression of hearing loss, which occurs when cochlear hair cells die after exposure to loud noise or ototoxic agents (e.g., cisplatin or aminoglycosides).

Origami Therapeutics

Origami is developing curative medicines for neurodegeneration by targeting the root cause of disease.

Palm Therapeutics

Palm Therapeutics is developing first-in-class palmitoylation inhibitors for high-value drug targets in the oncology space.

Senseer Therapeutics

To address the high failure rate of implantable devices, Senseer Health develops smart device therapies to track and manage device status in real-time, ultimately enabling timely intervention before a complete device failure occurs, often resulting in disability or even death.

Tigar Health

TIGAR Matches the Right Drug to the Right Patient.