In 2021, a quiet idea took shape around a loud, inconvenient truth. Roughly 40% of the human proteome lives outside the cell, visible, influential, and mostly untouched by modern degradation tools. EpiBiologics did not show up to admire the gap. They showed up to close it. Publicly launched in March 2023 out of San Mateo, California, the company was built on decades of work from Dr. James Allen Wells at the University of California, San Francisco, with a mindset that biology does not care about convenience, and neither should drug design.
Dr. James Allen Wells is not a novelty act. Genentech in its formative years, Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, UCSF. Cassette mutagenesis, alanine scanning, protein phage display, fragment-based discovery. The throughline is simple: build tools before the market knows it needs them. EpiBiologics carries that lineage forward with EpiTACs, modular bispecific antibodies designed to selectively degrade extracellular and membrane proteins in the tissue that matters, while leaving healthy tissue unbothered. Precision without apology.
That conviction just pulled serious capital. On January 8, 2026, EpiBiologics closed a $107M Series B led by GV and Johnson & Johnson Innovation via JJDC. Novartis Venture Fund, Aulis Capital, Avego BioScience Capital, and Samsara BioCapital joined in, with continued backing from Polaris Partners, Digitalis Ventures, Taiho Ventures, Vivo Capital, Codon Capital, and Mission BioCapital. This is not tourist money. This is long-horizon belief from people who read mechanisms, not headlines.
The timing is deliberate. EPI-326, a mutation-agnostic EGFR degrader, is moving into first-in-human trials in early 2026 for non-small cell lung cancer and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. This is not inhibition. This is removal. Degrading all oncogenic forms of EGFR, collapsing downstream signaling, and doing it with tissue selectivity that directly addresses toxicity, the quiet killer of prior EGFR therapies. Three years from funding to clinic is not luck. It is execution.
The platform depth matters. AbTACs, KineTACs, TrainTACs. Proteasomal and lysosomal pathways. Soluble and membrane targets. Combination-ready with chemotherapy, ADCs, and immunotherapy. Preclinical validation across EGFR and c-Met, including patient-derived NSCLC models, shows this is not a one-trick construct. It is a system designed to scale across disease biology.
Leadership reflects that intent. Ann Lee-Karlon brings 18 years of Genentech experience to the CEO role. Shyra Gardai drives scientific execution. Eric Humke guides clinical strategy. Aaron Mishel builds financial architecture. Craig Lichtenstein keeps operations tight. The board now includes Anika Gupta Vatsa from GV, Laura Brass from Novartis Venture Fund, Gaurav Aggarwal from Vivo Capital, JJDC representation, alongside Rami Hannoush and Ann Lee-Karlon. Governance that matches ambition.
The targeted protein degradation market is accelerating fast, oncology carries the gravity, and EGFR driven cancers remain unforgiving. EpiBiologics is not chasing noise or trend cycles. They are expanding the addressable biology itself. When extracellular proteins finally get their reckoning, this chapter will matter, and the footnotes will start in San Mateo.
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