About Us

ImmuneBridge is on a mission to discover and amplify the cures within us.

We believe the intelligence and diversity of our collective immune systems will unlock discoveries that will change the way cancer is treated. We are developing cellular cures using nature’s most innately discerning disease fighters.

Our vision is to build a bridge between humanity’s innate cellular pharmacopeia and modern engineering and manufacturing technologies to enable a future where potent and safe cell therapies are accessible for all patients.

Our Story

We are a team of scientists and engineers based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We value curiosity, diversity, humility, and generosity—in life and at work. ImmuneBridge was founded in 2018 because we believe cell therapies are the future of medicine and we have a responsibility to make those therapies available to everyone.

Our first product in development is a natural killer cell-based immunotherapy for cancer, which we are manufacturing using expanded immune stem cells from cord blood. We intend to use our cellular discovery platform and expansion technology, alongside collaborations with organizations who share our mission, to scale cell therapy and save lives faster.

Meet the Team

Albina Popova

Executive Assistant

  • Albina Popova has more than a decade of administrative experience in the global healthcare field. She is adept at facilitating teamwork and implementing results-driven programs to impact patients and clinicians. Albina is passionate about advancing medicine and expanding access to healthcare for all.

    BA: University of California, Berkeley

Alex Jacobson

S. Alex Jacobson

chief executive officer

  • S. Alexander Jacobson is a founder and investment partner of 137 Ventures. Alex is also a founding investor of ImmuneBridge, a biotech startup developing genetically enhanced immune cell therapies, and founding advisor to Armada, a startup building a distributed data center platform connected by Starlink. Alex is also on the board of advisors of Strategy Capital, the investment fund of Hamilton Helmer, author of Seven Powers. Previously, Alex was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Founders Fund, where he led the diligence processes for investments in SpaceX. He also founded Shop.com, a shopping and comparison website, which he eventually sold to Altura Ventures, Virtual Office, one of the first companies to register commercially valuable domain names, and Interband, an advertising management and measurement company, which sold to Winstar Communications. Alex holds a BS in cognitive science from Brown University.

Alicia Romero

Office Manager

  • Alicia Romero is experienced in managing human subjects and recruitment while also being additionally skilled in overseeing purchasing and inventory for biotechnology labs. She is highly knowledgeable in managing business accounts for all operations within the biotech industry and is skilled at communicating with vendors to source and order a diverse range of specialty scientific and office supplies.

Ece Canan Sayitoglu, PhD

Senior Scientist

  • Ece Canan Sayitoglu is a bioengineer with extensive research experience in fields including immunology, molecular biology, genetic engineering and cancer immunotherapy. She completed her MSc degree at King's College London and PhD at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. She worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Nova Southeastern University (FL) andmore recently at Stanford University (CA) before joining the ImmuneBridge team. Her doctoral research focused on enhancing lentiviral gene delivery in human NK cells for better targeted therapies, and her postdoctoral studies helped advance genetically modified NK cells and T cells for various cancer immunotherapies. She is passionate about creating off-the-shelf cell therapies for cancer patients.

    BSc: Sabanci University
    MSc: King's College London
    PhD: Sabanci University

Everardo Hegewisch-Solloa, PhD

ScientisT

  • Evey Hegewisch-Solloa is an immunologist and NK cell biologist with a focus on human innate lymphocyte development. Evey completed his PhD in the Mace Lab at Columbia University Irving Medical Center where he worked on identifying the in-situ localization and molecular drivers of human NK cell development. Prior to his PhD work, Evey earned his BSc in Microbiology from UC San Diego and gained experience in ecology and viral evolution research. His interest in virology and evolution led him to complete his MSc thesis work in the Meyer Lab at UC San Diego where he studied viral responses to changes in viral-host protein interaction networks.

    BSc, MSc: University of California, San Diego
    MA, MPhil, PhD: Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Grace Eppolito

Scientist

  • Grace Eppolito is a biochemist specializing in cell culture and upstream process development. After graduating with her BS in biochemistry and molecular biology from Umass Amherst, she gained experience at MilliporeSigma culturing CHO cells for monoclonal antibody production. After MilliporeSigma, she developed skills culturing Sf9 cells for gene therapy production at Frontera Therapeutics.

    BS: University of Massachusetts Amherst

Miguel Madero

VP OF Software Engineering

  • Miguel Madero is a seasoned entrepreneur and technologist with 25 years of experience building and leading teams and companies. He worked as a consultant driving process improvements and tech adoption at large enterprises, started several companies in the healthcare industry, and worked at startups in key leadership roles. Most recently, he founded Foxtrot Health where they helped people with Alzheimer's better manage the disease.

Nina Horowitz, PhD

CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER

  • Nina Horowitz is a bioengineer with research experience in disciplines ranging from evolutionary biology to cancer immunology. She worked in laboratories at Williams College, Mount Sinai, Boston University, and Stanford University before joining the ImmuneBridge team. Her doctoral research centered around the uses of engineered natural killer cells for solid tumor immunotherapy.

    BA: Williams College
    MS, PhD: Stanford University

Oliver Zill, PhD

VP Of computational biology

  • Oliver Zill is an experienced manager and team builder with >20 years of experience in oncology, immunology, and genomics R&D, including previous roles at Genentech and Guardant Health. He has led cross-functional product development teams for T cell therapies, neoantigen vaccines, and circulating tumor DNA diagnostics. Oliver most recently founded init.bio, a company that helps startups design and build computational platforms and teams for drug development.

    BS: Columbia University
    PhD: University of California, Berkeley

Rui Tostoes, PhD

VP of Process Development, CMC

  • Rui Tostoes is an accomplished scientist and creative leader, with a passion for product and people development in cell therapy and bioprocessing. Through his work in MilliporeSigma and FloDesign Sonics, he is experienced in matrix work with functional areas of R&D, Product Development and Commercial in delivering successful product development and customer program execution.

    PhD: MIT, Portugal

Board of Directors

Alicia Jackson, PhD

Board of Directors

  • Alicia Jackson is a health tech entrepreneur and the founder of several biotech companies. She is currently founder and CEO of Evernow, a company transforming women’s health. She previously served as the Deputy Director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA was a policy staffer for the US Senate Energy Committee, and is currently part of the Editorial Advisory Board at TEDMED.

    PhD: Materials Science and Engineering, MIT

Dylan Morris

Board of Directors

  • Dylan Morris is a Managing Director at Insight Partners, where he leads the firm’s bio practice. Dylan joined Insight in 2021 to focus on investments at the intersection of computation and biology. He loves technology-enabled approaches to drug discovery and development, new therapeutic modalities, and curative therapies. He is drawn towards novel methods of generating data and enjoys working with driven founders who agree that the primary goal is to help patients.

    AB: Computer Science, Harvard

Nadiya Ishnazarova, PhD

Board of Directors

  • Nadiya Ishnazarova, PhD, is a Principal at M Ventures Biotechnology team covering Healthcare and Life Sciences investments. Nadiya joined M Ventures in 2021. Previously, Nadiya was a Project Manager in the Health & Life Sciences practice of global strategy consulting firm Oliver Wyman. She focused on the strategy and corporate transformation for corporate healthcare clients, health systems, providers, pharma and digital health clients in EMEA, Asia Pacific and Emerging Markets. Nadiya also supported M&A deals in the Healthcare and Life Science space on pre-transaction assessments of sources of value and risk. Nadiya received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford and her dissertation was focused on investigating the molecular mechanisms of recombination-dependent replication. Nadiya is based in Amsterdam at the M Ventures head office.

    PhD: Biochemistry, University of Oxford
    MS: Enzymology and Nanobiomaterials and Nanobiotechnology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
    BS: Organic Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Tom Farrell, MBA

Board of Directors

  • Tom Farrell has a twenty-five year track record as a serial biotech company builder and executive. He has been the founding CEO of two public cell therapy companies, most recently Artiva Biotherapeutics, a leader in off-the-shelf primary NK cell therapies for autoimmune disease and cancer, where he raised a $78 million Series A and supported the company through a successful crossover financing, major strategic partnership with Merck, and journey to a first S-1 filing. Previously, Tom was President and CEO of Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer in the development of controllable cell therapies. At Bellicum, which he built from a virtual startup through a highly successful IPO in 2014, raising a total of more than $300 million in the process, Tom brought five genetically modified cell therapies into clinical development, including one into pivotal trials. Previously, he was the founding President and CEO of Cylene Pharmaceuticals, a small molecule rational drug design company targeting secondary DNA structures to regulate oncogene expression. Tom received his B.A. in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller scholar.

Advisors

Adam Wilkinson, PhD

Scientific Advisor

  • Adam is a group leader at MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and a previous NIH-funded instructor at Stanford. He has expertise in ex vivo HSC expansion and mechanisms of HSC stemness and has researched stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine at Stanford and Oxford.

    PhD: Haematology, University of Cambridge

Aharon Freud, MD, PhD

Scientific Advisor

  • A pioneer in NK "subsetology," Aharon’s work has defined many of the landmarks of natural killer cell differentiation from hematopoietic progenitors. He is double board certified in Hematopathology and Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he studies NK development biology in healthy and diseased settings

    MD/PhD, MSTP: The Ohio State University

Catherine Blish, MD, PhD

Scientific Advisor

  • Catherine is a Professor of Medicine and Immunology and Associate Dean for Basic and Translational Science at Stanford University School of Medicine, where she conducts deep profiling of NK repertoires. She has expertise in phenotypes and diversity of NK cells in clinical settings, individuals, and populations and currently serves on several Scientific Advisory Boards.

    MD/PhD: University of Washington School of Medicine

Greg Bonfiglio, JD

ADVISOR

  • Founder and managing partner of Proteus LLC, an investment and advisory firm, Greg Bonfiglio is an early and active investor in stem cells and regenerative medicine. He works with regenerative medicine companies across all stages of development, in addition to governmental organizations that are avidly pursuing regenerative medicine initiatives.

    JD: University of Michigan Law School

Jane Wang, PhD

Scientific Advisor

  • Jane is currently Head of Delivery Sciences at Tessera Therapeutics in Somerville, MA. Previously, she led teams at GoogleX and Verily focused on nanoparticle drug delivery and molecular barcoding techniques. She is the inventor on more than 10 patents in drug delivery, drug design and genomic medicine space. Jane did her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry at University of California, Berkeley and her post-doc at Caltech in protein design and engineering.

    PhD: University of California, Berkeley

Jesse Cotari, PhD

scientific advisor, Co-founder

  • Jesse Cotari is a professional immunologist who received his training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he worked on cutting edge analytical models for immune cells. He is now championing NK cell-based immunotherapies and has spent the last decade working at early-stage biotech startups developing extensive first-hand knowledge of how to turn biological innovation into products.

    PhD: Cornell University
    BS: Economics, University of California, San Diego

Kim Warren, PhD

Advisor

  • An expert in process development, Kim Warren has extensive experience in manufacturing cellular and gene therapies, including hematopoietic stem cells and NK cells. She founded Poietic Technologies, a pioneering supplier of donor bone marrow and cord blood cells and co-founded AVROBIO, a clinical-stage gene therapy company, in addition to developing manufacturing processes for Lonza’s cellular and gene therapies.

    PhD: Comparative Physiology, University of Maryland

Peretz Partensky, PhD

scientific advisor, Co-founder

  • Peretz Partensky is a serial entrepreneur, YC founder, and immunology devotee who completed his PhD research at UCSF where he studied epigenetics, chromatin biochemistry, and the underlying mechanisms of cell identity. He led product and data at healthcare technology firm Vim in addition to co-founding two other companies: Cheetah Technologies and Sourcery, where he became passionate about both building and leading teams towards product development.

    MPhil: University of Cambridge
    PhD: University of California, San Francisco

Satiro de Oliveira, MD

Scientific Advisor

  • Satiro is a practicing pediatric hematologic oncologist and a Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor at UCLA where he splits his time researching new approaches for immunotherapies for cancer. He has expertise in HSC-derived immunotherapies, including CAR-NKs and is also the Associate Editor for Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment: SAGE Journals.

    MD: Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Sao Paulo

Our Investors

ImmuneBridge is backed by a diverse group of world-class life sciences and technology investors, committed to advancing ImmuneBridge’s mission to make curative immunotherapies accessible to all.

Our science

ImmuneBridge’s proprietary expansion technology amplifies cord blood-derived immune stem cells while maintaining their multipotency - to create a consistent, potent, and abundant cellular source for immunotherapies that is rooted in the immune lineage and its genetic diversity but leverages the scalability of iPSCs.

Join our team. 

Every employee has independence, trust, and influence. Positions are based in San Francisco across roles in research, analytics, operations, and process development. If you’re excited about working at ImmuneBridge, please reach out to careers@immunebridge.com.