SAN DIEGO, May 29, 2020 – Four of Goldfish current and past clients were selected as Connect Cool Companies 2020. All four companies are led by female founders. Goldfish celebrates this recognition for these hard-working organizations.
Cool Companies is an annual capital program designed to match San Diego’s best technology and life sciences startups ready to raise Series A — with quality venture capital. The program selects top tier, local entrepreneurs raising institutional funding, and grants them opportunities for direct access to capital providers. The program regularly attracts over 200 VCs to the region annually. Since 2016, Cool Companies have raised over $400M, in just Series A institutional funding. These six companies were selected among a group of 60 “Cool Companies” for 2020 by Connect with San Diego Venture Group from a pool of over 300 tech and life science applicants.
Abterra Bio (formerly Digital Proteomics), led by Natalie Castellana, PhD, uses machine learning to mine the human immune system to discover novel antibody therapeutics. Patients mount lasting antibody responses to infectious diseases and cancer. The platform uses next-generation sequencing and mass spectrometry data to comprehensively map this antibody response, rapidly identifying better therapeutic antibodies.
Micronoma, led by Sandrine Miller Montgomery, PharmD, PhD, is developing a liquid biopsy technology that interrogates the microbial signal to detect and predict cancer with clinical-grade accuracy.
Origami Therapeutics, led by Beth Hoffman, PhD, is an early stage biotech company taking a precision medicine approach to find disease-modifying treatments for neurodegenerative diseases caused by protein folding.
Vivid Genomics, led by Julie Collens, PhD, is a precision medicine company dedicated to improving the success of drug development in neurodegenerative disease. Using genomics, machine learning, and disease biology, they develop genetic-based profiling tests to identify variation in trial participants that impacts clinical trial outcomes. Their first 4 tests are focused on Alzheimer’s disease; with the information from these tests, pharma companies are empowered to make more informed decisions for clinical trial design and analysis, enroll the right patients, improve the probability of clinical trial success, and ultimately lead to the first drugs to slow or cure Alzheimer’s disease.