Biotech
5 Repeat-Founder Biotech Startups Building Their Next Venture
DealBio tracks early-stage biotech startups across Europe and North America. These 5 pair new scientific platforms with founders who have already built or led earlier ventures.
- Founder Strength
- Repeat Founders
- Drug Discovery
- Therapeutics
Repeat-founder experience does not remove scientific risk, but it can reduce some of the execution risk around building a biotech startup. Founders who have already raised capital, assembled teams, developed IP or advanced programs toward the clinic bring practical experience that is difficult to gain any other way.
These five startups span microbiome AI, immune delivery, personalized cancer vaccines, brain delivery and metabolic liver disease. What connects them is that at least one founder has already helped build another biotech or science-led startup and is now applying that experience to a new venture.
At a Glance
- Anto BiosciencesUnited States2025Microbiome-aware drug discovery
- Granza BioUnited States2024Targeted immune-delivery platform
- Nema HealthSpain2024Personalized melanoma immunotherapy
- Cerentry BioDenmark2026Systemic biologic delivery into the brain
- Heureka TherapeuticsDenmark2026Liver-targeted metabolic therapeutics
Building foundation models for microbial communities and microbiome drug discovery.
- Country
United States- Founded
- 2025
- Sector
- Biotech
- Funding stage
- Seed or earlier
Why Anto Biosciences stands out
Arvid E. Gollwitzer previously co-founded NextGuide, an AI assistance product for visually impaired users, before starting Anto Biosciences. Co-founder David de Gruijl also served as CTO of Nook Biosciences, where he worked on drug–microbiota interactions. That gives the team experience both in building an earlier technology startup and in the same microbiome-drug problem Anto is now commercializing.
Anto Biosciences was subsequently selected for Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch, adding a structured startup-building program to the founders’ prior operating and research experience.
What Anto Biosciences is building
Anto Biosciences is building foundation models that treat the gut microbiome as a variable in pharmaceutical R&D. The platform is designed to estimate how microbial differences may change drug efficacy and toxicity across patient populations.
Its Darwin model series combines microbial-community data with drug-development questions, starting with orally administered medicines where gut bacteria can alter a molecule before absorption.
Reprogramming immunity to create target-specific medicines.
- Country
- United States
- Founded
- 2024
- Sector
- Biotech
- Funding stage
- Seed or earlier
Why Granza Bio stands out
CEO Ashwin Nandakumar previously co-founded OncoAssign, a cancer-diagnostics startup focused on matching patients to treatments using biomarker data. At Granza Bio, he has moved from diagnostics into therapeutic delivery while retaining an oncology focus.
Granza Bio has since raised an oversubscribed $7.14 million seed round led by Felicis and Refactor, with Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and Oxford Angel Fund participating.
What Granza Bio is building
Granza Bio is developing engineered protein particles that package and deliver immune-active cargo to selected cells. The approach is designed to turn potent immune mechanisms into target-specific medicines rather than exposing tissues broadly.
The platform gives the startup a route to build multiple programs from the same delivery architecture, with oncology as an early focus.
Developing a personalized neoantigen immunotherapy for advanced melanoma.
- Country
Spain- Founded
- 2024
- Sector
- Biotech
- Funding stage
- Seed or earlier
Why Nema Health stands out
CEO Olga Rué Clarós brings more than a decade of biotech operating experience. She led Archivel Farma from 2011 to 2022, where the company raised multiple financing rounds and advanced its RUTI tuberculosis vaccine into clinical trials. She later co-founded RUTI IMMUNE and led a Capital Cell crowdfunding round that funded a vaccine study in healthcare workers.
Nema Health is therefore being built by a founder who has already managed financing and clinical translation in vaccine development. The startup has raised €730,000 in seed funding alongside a €335,000 NEOTEC grant and holds exclusive rights to DIF peptide technology protected across multiple jurisdictions.
What Nema Health is building
Nema Health is developing OncoNeoVac, a personalized cancer immunotherapy combining patient-specific neoantigens, tumor-derived targets created by cancer mutations, with DIF peptides designed to strengthen the immune response.
The initial program focuses on advanced melanoma, where the startup is using personalization to match the therapeutic antigen set to each patient’s tumor biology.
Developing a brain shuttle for systemic delivery of therapeutics into the brain.
- Country
Denmark- Founded
- 2026
- Sector
- Biotech
- Funding stage
- Seed or earlier
Why Cerentry Bio stands out
Mette Rosenkilde has one of the strongest repeat-founder records in this group. She previously co-founded Antag Therapeutics, which raised an €80 million Series A in 2024, and Synklino, which raised a €29.8 million Series A in 2022. She also co-founded Bainan Biotech and Inagen.
Cerentry Bio now applies that company-building experience to a new brain-delivery platform and has already entered BioInnovation Institute’s Venture Lab with €500,000 in convertible funding. Its founders are also named on a 2022 patent covering the underlying delivery approach.
What Cerentry Bio is building
Cerentry Bio is developing a brain shuttle that uses receptor-mediated transport at the choroid plexus, the tissue interface between blood and cerebrospinal fluid, to move systemically administered therapeutics into the brain.
The approach is intended to preserve convenient systemic dosing while expanding which biologic drug formats can reach central-nervous-system targets.
Developing targeted therapies for metabolic liver disease.
- Country
- Denmark
- Founded
- 2026
- Sector
- Biotech
- Funding stage
- Seed or earlier
Why Heureka Therapeutics stands out
Christoffer Clemmensen and Jonas Odgaard Petersen previously co-founded Ousia Pharma, where academic drug-delivery research was developed into an obesity-focused biotech startup. Ousia secured a three-digit-million-DKK investment from Omega Funds in 2025 to advance its lead program toward Phase 1.
At Heureka Therapeutics, the founders are applying that experience to liver-targeted metabolic therapeutics. Heureka has also joined BioInnovation Institute’s Venture Lab with €500,000 in financing, while its lead conjugate has shown early preclinical efficacy in a mouse model of metabolic liver disease.
What Heureka Therapeutics is building
Heureka Therapeutics is developing liver-targeted peptide-drug conjugates, medicines that chemically link a peptide carrier to a therapeutic payload, for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a progressive form of fatty-liver disease.
The carrier directs an AMPK activator into liver cells. AMPK is a cellular energy-sensing enzyme involved in fat and glucose metabolism, giving the program a way to concentrate activity in the target organ while limiting exposure elsewhere.
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Repeat founders bring operating experience into new biotech ventures
Across these startups, prior company-building experience is already visible in fundraising, IP strategy, team formation and the ability to move research toward product development. Several founders have previously advanced programs into clinical trials or raised substantial institutional rounds.
That experience does not make the underlying science less ambitious; it gives the new venture founders who already understand how biotech programs move from research into financing, development and commercialization. For investors, the earlier venture provides concrete evidence of how the founder has operated before.
Methodology
DealBio selected these startups from its coverage of early-stage health and longevity startups, focusing on biotech ventures where at least one founder had previously built, co-founded or led another relevant startup. The selection deliberately spans different therapeutic and platform models rather than concentrating on one disease area.
DealBio builds its Startup Briefs using publicly available startup materials, ecosystem sources, market references and professional profiles.