KiraGen 🧬

Opening Remarks

This week, I’ve been thinking about the rise of creators—and why niche is the new mainstream.

Cultural consensus has collapsed. We don’t all watch the same shows, follow the same stars, or scroll the same feeds. But that fragmentation isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. And it’s what makes the creator economy so powerful right now.

For startups, this shift changes how distribution works—and who can help drive it. I wrote more about this shift, and why specificity is the future of influence here. Now, onto this week’s feature:

—Brett

Bulletpitch’s publication covers the hottest early-stage startup before being picked up by larger media outlets. If that’s you, apply here.

Setting the Scene

• A new kind of cancer treatment, called CAR-T, trains your immune cells to find and kill cancer, but it mostly works only in blood cancers.

• When used on solid tumors like brain cancer, the treatment fails because the tumor creates a toxic environment that shuts immune cells down.

• Most companies try to fix this by making the cells stronger, but that can cause dangerous side effects, especially in the brain.

• The smarter approach? Make the cells immune to the tumor’s tricks so they can stay focused and finish the job.

• This week’s company is building cancer-fighting cells that block the tumor’s defense system before it can stop them.

In a Sentence

KiraGen uses AI to design immune cells that can resist the defenses of solid tumors like brain, lung, and breast cancer.

• Immune Cells: Special white blood cells reprogrammed to find and destroy cancer.

• Solid Tumors: Hard-to-treat cancers that create signals to block or weaken those immune cells.

• AI: KiraGen uses machine learning to predict the best gene edits, helping design more effective treatments faster and with fewer failed experiments.

The Basics

• Industry: Biotechnology

• Headquarters: Cambridge, MA

• Year Founded: 2023

• Employee Count: 6

• Investors: 2048 Ventures, Conscience VC, Gaingels, ZAKA VC, Lexi VC, Pareto Holdings, Incite Labs, Meru Capital Group

• Amount Raised: $1.4M

• Business Model: KiraGen develops its own cancer therapies and will eventually license its AI platform–predicted gene edit combinations to other biotechs and pharma companies to improve their cell therapies.

• Early Traction: Lead therapy for brain cancer (GBM) showed strong results in animal models, with additional preclinical support across other solid tumors, and is now advancing toward future trials in partnership with UPenn.

Sponsored Content*

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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Weekly Feature Continued

Due Diligence

WHAT WE LIKE

• Market Opportunity: Solid tumors represent a fast growing, nearly $200B global market with around 19M new cases annually and virtually no durable cell therapies approved to treat them.

• Off-the-Shelf: Most cell therapies in solid tumors rely on modifying each patient’s own cells, while KiraGen uses donor cells that are ready-to-use, faster to make, and cheaper to scale.

• Closing a Known Gap: Instead of starting from scratch, KiraGen is building directly on clinical signals from early CAR-T trials—designing a solution to the exact failure that’s holding the field back.

POTENTIAL RISKS

• Clinical Translation: Strong mouse data is a start, but translating those results into durable responses in humans, especially in GBM, is still unproven.

• Scalability Challenge: Even with an off-the-shelf model, manufacturing consistent cell therapies at scale is still an unsolved problem in the field.

• Indication Risk: Early setbacks could cast doubt on both the lead program and the broader platform, making early clinical validation critical for investor confidence and downstream partnerships.

Founder Profile

• Aaron Edwards, CEO: Previously led a gene-edited CAR-T program for T cell leukemia at Beam Therapeutics, and holds a master’s in biology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

• Ryan Murray, CSO: Deep experience in immuno-oncology from roles at Beam Therapeutics and bluebird bio, where he focused on translating multiplexed CAR-T approaches for solid tumors, and holds a PhD from Northeastern.

Comps

• Moonlight Bio: Boosts T cell strength using natural mutations, but only targets one gene at a time—KiraGen tackles multiple tumor defenses at once.

• OverT Bio: Improves T cells by adding a single protein, but lacks KiraGen’s customized, multi-gene approach built around real tumor biology.

• Waypoint Bio: Gathers great data to improve CAR design, but doesn’t engineer the whole cell to resist suppression like KiraGen does.

Event Board

• End of Summer Dinner, NYC: At the end of August we’re hosting a dinner for top-tier founders and investors in NYC. Sign up HERE.

• Bulletpitch Boston Dinner: To kick off the fall, we’re headed to Boston to host a dinner for innovators and investors. Sign up HERE.

• Second Annual Emerging Investor Art Gala, NYC: On September 18th, we’re bring together the next generation of venture capital and growth equity investors. Sign up HERE.

Cast Your Vote

Last Week Today

• The Results Are In: NoLogo, a DTC platform that uses AI to turn any product link into made-to-order furniture, was favored in last week’s poll.

• Subscriber Feedback: “This company is brilliant to lean into this consumer shift of #dupe culture.”