Nobel Laureate-Led AI Biotech Ridge Bio Secures $25M Seed Round to Advance Next-Gen Enzyme Therapies and Bioconjugation Platforms

Recently, AI biopharmaceutical companiesRidge BiotechnologiesAnnounced emergence from stealth mode and completion$25 millionThe seed round of financing. (approximately RMB 180 million).

Ridge BioByIncubated by Sutter Hill Ventures, which also led the investment.Ridge Biotechnologies Seed Round Financing,Overlap Holdings, etc. participated in the investment.

Ridge Bio was founded in 2025, headquartered in San Francisco, USA, by graduates of Northwestern University.Dr. Weston Kightlinger serves as the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Dr. Weston Kightlinger is a serial entrepreneur and a pioneer in the fields of cell-free synthesis and enzyme design. He founded and served as the Chief Technology Officer of SwiftScale Biologics, a leader in the cell-free manufacturing sector that was acquired by Resilience.

In addition,Nobel Prize WinnerDr. Carolyn BertozziServe as a consultant to the company.

The company is based on itsAI Models Built on Cell-Free Datasets for Developing Next-Generation Bioconjugates, Protein Design, and Enzyme Therapies.

The platform can be widely applied to Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADC),In vivoCAR-T therapy, targeted nucleic acid delivery, small molecule biocatalysis, radiotherapy, and enzyme-based therapies.

Ridge Bio claims that the company is generating cell-free datasets at an unprecedented speed and scale, producing sequence function data in a short time that is a million times greater than traditional methods.

In addition, Ridge Bio announced a collaboration with a leading ADC-focused biotechnology company to leverage Ridge Bio's platform for designing and precisely linking linker systems that deliver therapeutic payloads specifically to tumor tissues, thereby protecting healthy cells.

Ridge Bio's initial products include NativeLink enzymes and ProTrigger linkers. NativeLink enzymes are designed biocatalysts that enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to perform site-specific modifications of therapeutic proteins and add precise targeting systems, all without altering the protein sequence, cell line, or any upstream manufacturing process.

ProTrigger Linker is an AI-designed protease-cleavable prodrug system that releases or activates therapeutic payloads at targeted sites in vivo.

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