Meet the Winners and Finalists of the 23rd Annual Pantheon Awards

WINNERS

• Genentech
• Dr. Ziad Obermeyer
• Noetik
• Revolution Medicines
• Teal Health
• San Diego Squared
• Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD

EMERGING INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR FINALISTS

• Character Biosciences
• Cyclarity Therapeutics
• Iolyx Therapeutics
• Profluent
• Samay

INDUSTRY PIONEER

Genentech

South San Francisco, CA

California didn’t just join the life sciences industry; it started it. The Industry Pioneer Award recognizes the organizations whose early risks and breakthroughs laid the foundation for the sector we know today, creating the science, talent, and ecosystem that generations of companies have built on.

Genentech’s launch in South San Francisco in 1976 helped set that story in motion. The company brought molecular biology into drug discovery and development and built the template the sector still follows. Today it has more than 40 approved medicines on the U.S. market, 66 new molecules in clinical development, and 43 FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designations. Twenty-seven of those medicines launched in the past 16 years alone, for patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and hemophilia. Genentech is a large part of why the Bay Area became the epicenter of life sciences innovation.

ACADEMIC DISCOVERY OF THE YEAR

Dr. Ziad Obermeyer

UC Berkeley · Berkeley, CA

For Deep learning-derived ECG biomarker for sudden cardiac death risk stratification

Every therapy, every device, and every breakthrough company begins with a discovery. This award honors a California academic institution, research institute, or non-profit whose scientific finding or research initiative has the potential to reshape human health.

Sudden cardiac death kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. Implantable defibrillators have prevented it since 1980. Identifying which patients would benefit has always been the challenge. Research led by Ziad Obermeyer, MD and published in Nature used AI to identify at-risk patients from routine electrocardiograms, the kind recorded in a hospital or on a smartwatch, and more than 85% of the people it flagged were missed by the risk measure clinicians rely on today. A clinical trial is now underway, and the model also surfaced a previously unrecognized electrical signal that points toward how fibrosis may disrupt the heart’s electrical activity, turning a prediction tool into a route to new biology.

AI CATALYST FOR HEALTH

Noetik

South San Francisco, CA

In California, academic and private organizations are using artificial intelligence to change how research is done, how diseases are detected, and how operations run. This award recognizes a life sciences organization, headquartered in California or with significant California presence, that has harnessed AI to drive transformative advances in healthcare, research, or operations.

Noetik builds foundation models of human biology aimed at changing clinical outcomes in oncology. Its OCTO models are trained on what the company describes as the largest proprietary multimodal spatial oncology dataset of its kind, and they are used to match therapeutic targets to the patient populations most likely to respond, surface new targets, and predict clinical efficacy. Through partnerships with clinical developers and pharmaceutical companies including GSK, Noetik is building an AI infrastructure layer for translational medicine. It also co-develops therapeutics of its own, with the aim of raising the probability that they succeed in the clinic.

BIOPHARMA PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

Revolution Medicines

Redwood City, CA

For RASONQUE™ (daraxonrasib)

California has long believed the hardest problems in human biology are worth solving. This award honors a California biotech or pharmaceutical company that has crossed a landmark regulatory milestone with a product that changes what treatment looks like for patients.

Revolution Medicines is a commercial-stage oncology company focused on RAS-addicted cancers, built around a RAS(ON) tri-complex inhibitor platform designed to target RAS in its active, cancer-driving state rather than work around it. RASONQUE™, the company’s oral RAS(ON) multi-selective inhibitor, has been approved by the U.S. FDA for adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma who have received at least one prior systemic therapy or who are not candidates for multiagent systemic therapy. Pancreatic cancer remains one of the hardest indications in oncology, which makes an approval in previously treated metastatic disease a consequential place to arrive first. RASONQUE™ is now being investigated through a global Phase 3 registrational program in pancreatic cancer and in metastatic RAS-mutant non-small cell lung cancer.

CONVERGENT TECHNOLOGY PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

Teal Health

San Francisco, CA

For The Teal Wand

The future of healthcare is being designed in California, where engineering meets biology and where a single device or digital tool can profoundly change a person’s health trajectory. This award recognizes a medical device, digital health, or diagnostic company with California ties that has achieved a key regulatory or commercial milestone with a product that genuinely advances how we detect, monitor, or treat disease.

Teal Health is a women’s health company working to eliminate cervical cancer by making screening accessible, comfortable, and accurate. The Teal Wand, its flagship product, is the first FDA-authorized at-home HPV self-collection device for cervical cancer screening, and the company’s telehealth platform wraps it in an end-to-end experience covering access to providers, at-home sample collection, secure results, and support with follow-up care. Teal Health has built its clinical evidence base alongside the product, with 17 peer-reviewed papers and presentations to date. As a member of the Cervical Cancer Roundtable, a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and Cancer Moonshot, the company also helps shape preventive care standards more broadly.

ELIZABETH SCHAR INSPIRING FUTURE LEADERS

San Diego Squared

San Diego, CA

Named in honor of Elizabeth Schar, a champion for equitable science education, this award recognizes non-profit or community-based organizations that have made exceptional contributions to inspiring the next generation of life sciences innovators.

San Diego Squared is a nonprofit developing the next generation of STEM leaders through education, mentorship, and workforce development. Its Fellows, Scholars, and Interns programs follow students from high school through college and into the workforce, with professional mentorship, scholarships, paid internships, industry exposure, and a community of peers invested in their success. SD2 has raised more than $8 million, served 175 Fellows, secured 186 paid internships, and invested more than $2 million in scholarships. The organization treats this as an investment in San Diego’s future STEM workforce, which also gives industry partners a direct connection to a pipeline of local talent.

LEADERSHIP

Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD

UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute

California’s life sciences ecosystem is built on science and shaped by people. The Pantheon’s highest honor recognizes an individual who has demonstrated exceptional leadership, vision, and dedication to advancing the California life sciences sector through company building, scientific leadership, institutional impact, or ecosystem development.

Catriona Jamieson directs the Sanford Stem Cell Institute and the UC San Diego CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic, and serves as Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Regenerative Medicine. Her research identified missplicing, RNA hyper-editing, and splice isoform switching as mechanisms that sustain human cancer stem cells, work that informed JAK2 and sonic hedgehog inhibitor trials and contributed to three FDA approvals for myeloproliferative neoplasms and leukemia. She has since led the engineering of stem cell and tumor organoid nanobioreactors flown on 11 missions to the International Space Station, studying how spaceflight stress affects stem cell fitness. Few careers trace the full distance from a mechanistic discovery to an approved therapy as clearly.

Character Biosciences

Brisbane, CA

Character Biosciences is a clinical-stage company working to preserve vision in people with serious, progressive eye diseases. Its Character Arc platform brings together longitudinal clinical data, retinal imaging, genetics, and other biological data from nearly 10,000 patients to map how disease actually progresses and why it affects patients differently. Both of the company’s clinical programs came out of insights the platform generated: CTX203, a potential first-in-class therapy for high-risk intermediate age-related macular degeneration, and CTX114, a potential best-in-class therapy for geographic atrophy. Both are in Phase 1 evaluation, with Phase 2 trials expected to begin in 2027.

Cyclarity Therapeutics

Novato, CA

Cyclarity Therapeutics targets a specific driver of age-related disease: oxidized cholesterol, a toxin with no biological function that most cells have no way to clear. Its lead molecule, UDP-003, is designed to bind and extract it, beginning with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, where the aim is to reduce plaque burden rather than simply slow progression. A first-in-human Phase 1 trial found UDP-003 well tolerated at all doses, with significant and dose-dependent engagement of its target. A Phase 1b trial in patients with coronary artery disease is ongoing and may produce preliminary efficacy data to inform Phase 2.

Iolyx Therapeutics

Burlingame, CA

Iolyx Therapeutics is an immuno-ophthalmology company developing targeted, locally delivered therapies for inflammation throughout the eye, from the ocular surface and anterior chamber to the retina, optic nerve, and peri-orbital space. Its first clinical asset, ILYX-002, is a Phase 3-ready Th17/Th1 inhibitor tested specifically in autoimmune-driven dry eye disease, now licensed to Théa Pharma, which will run the Phase 3 trial and handle global commercialization. Pipeline assets including ILYX-008 aim to restore immune homeostasis and prevent vision-threatening complications in retinal and posterior compartment disease. The team draws on ocular drug development experience from Genentech, Allergan, Aerie, and Pfizer.

Profluent

Emeryville, CA

Profluent builds foundation models for biological molecules, trained on the Profluent Protein Atlas, a dataset of more than 115 billion unique protein sequences. The company built OpenCRISPR-1, the first AI-designed gene editor to edit the human genome, published the work in Nature, and made the editor freely available for research and commercial use. With ProGen3 it produced the first wet-lab evidence that scaling laws apply to protein design, and a $2.25 billion agreement with Eli Lilly funds AI-designed recombinases for inserting working copies of faulty genes. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Emeryville, Profluent also partners with BioMarin, Ensoma, Revvity, and the Rett Syndrome Research Trust.

Samay

Silicon Valley, CA

Samay built Sylvee, an AI-powered chest wearable that screens for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease without a mouthpiece or maximal effort from the patient. About half of U.S. COPD cases go undiagnosed, largely because spirometry requires trained staff and misses early disease, so Sylvee instead uses Active Acoustic Resonance, a technology the company’s founder invented, to detect air trapping and small airway disease in a five-minute test, validated against CT, alongside airflow obstruction, validated against spirometry. The company holds 24 granted or allowed patents, has studied 470 patients, and works with Chiesi, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Iowa. Founder Maria Artunduaga, MD named the device after her grandmother Sylvia, who died of an undetected COPD exacerbation.