The Artisan MAKEfile Platform utilizes its proprietary STAR-CRISPR system and suite of bioinformatics tools to optimize cell therapy targets. Through sophisticated on- and off-target profiling, Artisan produces a MAKEfile for CDMO execution.
Generative
Cell Design
Traversing the Generative Cell Design cycle at
scale for discovery, prototyping, and
optimization using proprietary CRISPR methods.
The ArtisanBio Platform is built on four revolutionary biotech innovations and delivers the best precision therapeutic targets.
The Artisan Platform leverages proprietary STAR-CRISPR and AI/ML pipelines to deliver an unparalleled target discovery and optimization engine, empowering lab-directed evolution at an unprecedented scale.
Artisan Bio Empowers Partners Throughout Discovery & Preclinical Development
SyionAI Delivers the Best Precision Therapeutic Targets
iPSC MAKEfiles
Validated performance in iPSC across a wide variety of culture conditions.
T Cell MAKEfiles
High performance knock outs and knock ins, including pre-packaged MAKEfiles for TCR, HLA-I, and HLA-II knock outs.
Artisan Bio provides partners with advanced genome engineering and drug discovery tools for the research and commercialization of cell and gene therapies.
“We are thrilled with the technical results and deep data produced by Artisan in our cell therapy engineering collaboration.
The Artisan Platform has the throughput, tools, assays, and skillsets required to rapidly optimize editing of target genes. Moreover, Artisan’s STAR-CRISPR platform proved powerful for rapidly identifying and tuning the best editing sites in the generation of multiplex edited product cells . Finally, Artisan’s many years of experience in gene editing, CRISPR nuclease discovery and engineering, as well as in cell engineering has thoroughly impressed our team at Takeda.”
Lan Cao Vice President Head of Cell Therapy Innovation
“Artisan has provided excellent delivery of proof-of-concept data using their genome engineering and STAR-CRISPR editing platform for gene knockout, as well as data for gene knock-in that is competitive with others in the field.
The quality and speed of their data generation, as well as their expanding suite of off target analyses to support potential clinical application, exceeded our expectations.
This technology offers an important path forward for gene editing to enable potential next generation cell therapy products.”
Gwen Binder Executive Vice President Science & Technology
Our team
Our team of leaders, engineers, and scientists across the globe work to reliably and rapidly operate our immune cell foundry to generate cell products that produce positive outcomes in patients.
Leadership Team
Ryan is an experienced executive, company builder, strategist, and leader of diverse technical teams. He currently serves as CEO and Board Member at Artisan, where he is responsible for all aspects of Artisan’s vision to design, build, and deliver precisely engineered cells for next-generation therapeutic applications.
Over the past 2 decades, Ryan has envisioned and built a range of internationally recognized companies in the field of genome engineering. This includes roles as CEO, CSO, and Board Member at Inscripta, Inc.; founder at Biota Technology; and founder, advisor, and Board Member at OPXBIO. Ryan also has an outstanding academic history. He built a world-class synthetic biology/DNA Foundry group at the University of Colorado and was the Scientific Director and NNF Laureate Fellow for DNA Foundries at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainablity in Denmark.
Ryan is the inventor on foundational patents for Artisan, as well as both Inscripta, Inc. and OPXBIO. Ryan’s scientific contributions include over 30 patents, 100+ peer reviewed publications, and dozens of invited and keynote presentations.
Tanya is a seasoned executive-level professional with a unique combination of experience in technical, operational, and business leadership. Tanya currently serves as President, CTO and Board Member at Artisan. Tanya’s ventures include cell engineering startups with a variety of applications (cell therapies, biofuels, and biochemicals) and life sciences tools including instrumentation, reagent development, and software engineering. Prior to Artisan, Tanya was the Co-Founder, CTO, and VP of Applications at Inscripta, Inc. and Director of Technology at OPXBIO.
Tanya is the inventor on 20+ patent filings and brings deep expertise in genome engineering, DNA foundry workflows and automation, as well as engineering novel endonucleases for CRISPR-based editing.
Leading Artisan’s Finance team, Paul draws on his 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s most innovative companies. His robust financial background includes corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and investor relations.
Before joining Artisan, Paul served as CFO at Allvue Systems, a leading SaaS platform serving the alternative investment industry. Prior to Allvue, he held the position of Managing Director at Morgan Stanley where he led the financial technology investment banking team, advising clients globally on mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and other strategic transactions.
Paul holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a MBA from the University of Michigan.
Luke draws on his experience in analytics and business development to inform commercial and portfolio strategy at Artisan Biotechnologies. He has expertise in applying data science and machine learning to genomics data across human health and industrial applications. Luke was Co-Founder and VP of Technology at Biota Technology, where he led product development and metagenomic analytics. Biota was later acquired by Novozymes (NZYM), where his microbial approach informed new human health product initiatives. He holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Erik has an extensive financial and accounting background spanning 17 years. He specializes in turning complicated financial data into meaningful information for effecting decision making. His expertise includes financing, controls and compliance, finance and treasury management, SEC and financial reporting and investor relations. Prior to his time at Artisan, Erik served as VP of Finance at Inscripta, Inc., Head of Financial Reporting Operations at Metropolitan Merchant Capital, and Controller at OPXBIO.
Ajay founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Biota, the pioneer in environmental genomics, that was acquired by the industrial biotech leader, Novozymes (NZYM). In 8 years, Biota scaled from university microbiome research to a commercial business that created $400M in economic value and saved 1.2B gallons of water for 20+ industrial companies.
Prior to founding Biota, Ajay was a venture capital investor in a $100M seed fund spun out from Mohr Davidow Ventures, XSeed Capital. The firm invested and formed companies based on university science innovations. Ajay began his career at the world-leading cancer therapeutic company Genentech, where he held various positions in product operations.
Ajay is an active member of YPO, a global organization for CEOs, where he serves on the Board of the Costal San Diego chapter and two Global networks, Deal and Entrepreneurship. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas School of Business.
Jonathan is a scientific, technical, and business leader with deep experience in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, data science, and statistics across diverse life science domains. As VP, Genomics & Data Science, he contributes to the operational and strategic vision for Artisan's discovery platform with to pioneer world-class solutions in the CRISPR and cell-therapeutic space. Prior to Artisan, Jonathan led the data and statistical operations for clinical diagnostic development at ArcherDX (acquired by Invitae), which enabled a regulatory product approval. He was also a key strategic leader at Kaleido Biosciences and Indigo Agriculture, where he was responsible for guiding computational research and discovery platforms amidst explosive company growth. Jonathan is the inventor on multiple patents and the author of 40+ peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Board of Directors
Weinand currently serves as President of Bayer Pharmaceuticals and is a member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG. Previously, he was President, Global Commercialization & Portfolio Management at Otsuka. During his 30 year career, he has held various responsibilities in commercial, operations, and strategy in various therapeutic areas including cardiovascular diseases, oncology, dermatology, immunology, and respiratory and inflammatory diseases . These positions included heading business operations in markets in the United States, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America for companies including Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He earned an M.S. in pharmacology and toxicology from Long Island University, New York, and a B.A. in biology from Concordia College, New York.
Ryan is an experienced executive, company builder, strategist, and leader of diverse technical teams. He currently serves as CEO and Board Member at Artisan, where he is responsible for all aspects of Artisan’s vision to design, build, and deliver precisely engineered cells for next-generation therapeutic applications.
Over the past 2 decades, Ryan has envisioned and built a range of internationally recognized companies in the field of genome engineering. This includes roles as CEO, CSO, and Board Member at Inscripta, Inc.; founder at Biota Technology; and founder, advisor, and Board Member at OPXBIO. Ryan also has an outstanding academic history. He built a world-class synthetic biology/DNA Foundry group at the University of Colorado and was the Scientific Director and NNF Laureate Fellow for DNA Foundries at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainablity in Denmark.
Ryan is the inventor on foundational patents for Artisan, as well as both Inscripta, Inc. and OPXBIO. Ryan’s scientific contributions include over 30 patents, 100+ peer reviewed publications, and dozens of invited and keynote presentations.
Tanya is a seasoned executive-level professional with a unique combination of experience in technical, operational, and business leadership. Tanya currently serves as President, CTO and Board Member at Artisan. Tanya’s ventures include cell engineering startups with a variety of applications (cell therapies, biofuels, and biochemicals) and life sciences tools including instrumentation, reagent development, and software engineering. Prior to Artisan, Tanya was the Co-Founder, CTO, and VP of Applications at Inscripta, Inc. and Director of Technology at OPXBIO.
Tanya is the inventor on 20+ patent filings and brings deep expertise in genome engineering, DNA foundry workflows and automation, as well as engineering novel endonucleases for CRISPR-based editing.
Daniel Janse is a Director at Northpond Ventures on the firm’s biotechnologies team. Daniel is also a Board Director at Aro Biotherapeutics and Triumvira Immunologics. Previously, Daniel was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer at Arbor Biotechnologies, where he led scientific and general operations, business development, program and alliance management, and corporate development and strategy. Prior to Arbor, Daniel served in leadership positions in the U.S. and Europe at Juno Therapeutics, Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center, Inventages Venture Capital, and McKinsey & Company. Additionally, he was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Austria. Daniel holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he trained in the laboratory of Dr. George Church in the Department of Genetics. He earned a B.S. and B.A. with honors in biochemistry and economics from Brown University where he was an Oettinger National Scholar.
Mr. Chess is a serial entrepreneur in the life sciences field. He currently is Chairman of Nektar Therapeutics, (NASDAQ:NKTR), a health care biotechnology company. He is Lead Director of Twist Biosciences (NASDAQ:TWST), which produces synthetic genes using an innovative high-throughput silicon-based manufacturing process. Chess is also a Co-Founder, former Chairman, and a Board Member of Biota Technology, which is pioneering DNA sequencing for optimizing oil and gas production. He joined Nektar Therapeutics as its first non-founder employee in 1991 and led the company as CEO from 1992-1999 and as Chairman since then. Chess co-founded and was President of Penederm, a dermatology company that went public and was acquired by Mylan Laboratories, and was the start-up CEO and later Chairman of OPXBIO, a renewable chemicals company which was sold to Cargill.
He started his career in the technology field and held management positions at Intel and Metaphor Computer Systems (later acquired by IBM). Chess served on the White House Staff in the first Bush Administration as a White House Fellow and Associate Director of the White House Office of Economic and Domestic Policy. He is a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses in health care and entrepreneurship. Chess received a BS in engineering with honors from Caltech and an MBA from Harvard.
Michael Borrus is the founding General Partner of XSeed Capital (XSeed), where he invests in opportunities that span the technical continuum from autonomous systems to AI, blockchain applications, and where computer science intersects with other disciplines to disrupt large markets.
He is a member of the UC Berkeley School of Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Board and a lecturer in the Haas School of Business. He has served on several National Academy of Science / National Research Council steering committees and on the board of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI). He currently serves on the board of trustees for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). He also serves on the RI2 Selection Committee at Caltech.
Michael led XSeed’s investments in and currently participates on the Boards of Artisan Bio, AtScale, Biota, Citrine Informatics, Enya.ai, Life Signals, Lilt, Mines.io, PeerWell and Widesense. He also led XSeed’s investments in Trifacta and Listo, as well as GeneWeave Biosciences (acquired by Roche – RHHBY), OPXBIO (acquired by Cargill, Inc.), Playnomics (acquired by Unity Technologies), BrightBox (acquired by Flextronics International Ltd – FLEX), Eloquent Labs (acquired by Square – SQ) and Allopartis (acquired by Novozymes – NVZMY).
Before founding XSeed in 2006, Michael was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures. He also spent five years at a financial services start-up, was Adjunct Professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering, and a partner in a strategy consulting firm. While at UC Berkeley, he co-founded the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.
Michael has authored three books and 75 chapters, articles and monographs on topics including the internet and data networking, management of technology, competition in information technology industries, international trade and investment, and financial strategies for technology companies. The common thread in his varied careers has been a focus on emerging new technologies, and the business models and strategies necessary to exploit new market opportunities.
Advisory Board
Stefan Wildt, Ph.D. is the Chief Technology Officer at Takeda R&D. Stefan leads Takeda’s Translational Cell Therapy Engine, an interdisciplinary group of scientists advancing a diverse pipeline of cell therapy assets, some of which are developed in partnership with leaders in the field such as Gamma Delta Therapeutics (UK), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (USA), Noile Immune Biotech (JP) and the Center for iPSC Cell Research and Application (CiRA) (JP). Takeda’s cell therapy efforts focus on several platforms, from next generation chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells via gamma-delta T cells, to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and natural killer (NK) cells. Several of Takeda’s cell therapy assets are at the clinical stage.
He has also been responsible for the development and execution of an end-to-end vision and strategy for Pharmaceutical Sciences, ensuring the necessary capabilities for an innovative, highly partnered and modality-diverse pipeline. Pharmaceutical Sciences supports CMC activities through all development stages and is also responsible for Takeda’s device development. Stefan’s team is responsible for the seamless transfer of technology and know-how to the Global Manufacturing and Sciences and Global Quality organizations.
Prior to joining Takeda, Stefan worked at Novartis Pharma AG, where he was Vice President of Global Head Technical Research and Development Cell- and Gene-Therapies (TRD-CGT). While at Novartis, he and his teams were responsible for building the technical team, capabilities, internal and external footprint, as well as the strategy, that supported a variety of cell and gene therapy programs, delivering the cell process for the first ever approved and commercialized chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy. Before joining Novartis, he served as Head of Biologics and Bioprocess Research and Development at Merck & Co and Senior Director at Merck BioVentures (MBV), where he was a member of the core team developing Merck’s entry into the follow-on biologics space.
Dr. Frohlich is a medical oncologist with deep drug development and translational research experience. From 2014-2017, Dr. Frohlich served as the Executive Vice President of Portfolio Strategy for Juno. Prior to that, he held various executive roles, including EVP R&D and Chief Medical Officer at Dendreon Corporation from 2005-2014 and VP and Medical Director for Xcyte Therapies from 2001-2005. Dr. Frohlich brings extensive expertise in immuno-oncology and cell therapy, experience with drug approvals in US and EU, and knowledge of reimbursement and commercialization challenges.
Dr. Verneris is the Barton Family Endowed Chair of Bone Marrow Transplant, Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital.
His research studies are aimed at developing cellular therapies to reduce leukemia recurrence by enhancing immune recovery and by more effectively treating sites of leukemia (with a newly developed method of bone marrow irradiation).
Dr. Christine Brown is the Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy in the Departments of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Immuno-Oncology at City of Hope. Her research has focused on advancing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumors. As Deputy Director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories (TCTRL), Dr. Brown provides scientific oversight for TCTRL translational programs to accelerate the phase I testing of CAR T cell therapy. She has built and led multi-disciplinary teams for CAR T cell GMP manufacturing, quality control release, patient correlative studies and regulatory protocol management. A major focus of Dr. Brown’s research laboratory is the development CAR T cell therapies for treatment of malignant brain tumors. Her efforts to improve CAR design, optimize T cell manufacturing, and assess locoregional routes of T cell delivery have led to the initiation of several first-in-human clinical trials, including clinical testing of IL13Rα2-, HER2- and CLTX-directed CAR T cells for the treatment of glioblastoma. This clinical experience is revealing important insights into the optimization of CAR T cells for the treatment of malignant brain tumors. Dr. Brown’s ongoing research efforts also aim to develop strategies to limit tumor antigen escape and to overcome the suppressive tumor microenvironment, critical challenges limiting the effectiveness of CAR T cell therapy for treatment of solid tumors.
Dr. Brown received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Leukemia & Lymphoma Scholar during her post-doctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University. Her research has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research, and other notable journals, as well as featured by many news and magazine outlets including National Public Radio (NPR), O Magazine and US News and World Report. Dr. Brown has more than ten patents in the CAR T cell field and her discoveries have been foundational for the start of two publically traded biotechnology companies.
Dr. DeSelm is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. DeSelm’s research is focused broadly on the re-engineering of immune cells to fight cancer, using CAR cellular therapy. One major obstacle to applying this technique to all cancers is the difficulty in finding target molecules that are only expressed on the tumor cells, but not on critical normal tissues. Further, if not every tumor cell expresses the target molecule, the cancer will not be cured, as the negative cells that escape will eventually grow back.
One major focus of his lab is identifying novel ways that CAR cellular therapy can overcome the problem of antigen escape in order to fully eliminate disseminated, heterogeneous cancer cells. Additional problems exist in solid tumors, including poor penetration of the tumor by CAR-T cells, and inherent resistance of particular tumors to T cell killing. The mechanisms by which these occur, and methods to overcome them, are active areas of investigation within the laboratory.
Dr. Davilla is a Senior Member at the Moffitt Cancer Center where he serves as a physician-scientist that treats cancer patients using cell therapies and chemotherapies. Dr. Davilla is dedicated to the development of T cell therapies for cancer. He has been involved with and/or led multiple clinical trials on cellular therapies.
His research is focused on the development of novel animal mouse models for use in evaluating CAR cellular therapies, the development of new CARs (i.e. not CD19) targeting a variety of hematologic and solid tumor malignancies, and the refining and optimization of the production of therapeutic tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) for treatment of solid tumors.
Todd Peterson is the Founder and Principal of GenApex Bio, a life sciences consulting, investment, and board practice company based in Coronado, California. Over 35 years across academic research and industrial R&D spanning molecular genetics, genomics, cell biology and synthetic biology engineering, his experience encompasses biotechnology, clinical diagnostics, life science research tools, drug discovery and industrial biotechnology markets, products, and technologies.
Prior to GenApex Bio, Dr. Peterson was Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute comprising foundational and applied research programs across its Brain Science, Cell Science, Immunology Institutes, and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. Prior to the Allen Institute, Dr. Peterson was Chief Technology Officer at Synthetic Genomics (SGI) where he led an integrated team of scientists, engineers and informaticians to engineer diverse complex living systems. Before joining SGI, he led Synthetic Biology, Cloning and Protein Expression and Genomics R&D at Invitrogen/Life Technologies (now ThermoFisher), a global leader in life science research tools.
Dr. Peterson has held industrial R&D leadership and bench scientist positions with increasing responsibilities at Genicon Sciences, Trega Biosciences, Hybritech, Gen-Probe and Immulok, focusing on technology development and product commercialization. Dr. Peterson was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany, received his Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, and received his M.A. in Biological Sciences and his B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Professor Nielsen leads the development of experimental and computational tools to analyze and design complex biological systems at the University of Queensland in Australia. He is also the CSO of the Novo Nordisk Center for Biosustainability in Denmark. Nielsen’s studies of biological systems, including mammalian cells, bacteria, baker’s yeast, and sugarcane, has attracted industrial partnerships with companies including Dow, Metabolix, Amyris, LanzaTech, Boeing, Virgin Australia, and GE.
Nielsen is applying system analysis and design to tissue engineering including novel strategies for generating microtissues for drug screening, and using stem cells to produce red and white blood cells for transfusion. Nielsen has been granted patents in the fields of stem cells and metabolic engineering. He was on the Scientific Advisory Board of InSphero from 2009–2015, a company commercializing microtissue technology originating in the Nielsen laboratory. He is an editorial board member of a wide variety of scientific journals and holds several major awards in his field.
Prof. Dr. Palsson is the Galletti Professor of Bioengineering, the Principal Investigator of the Systems Biology Research Group in the Department of Bioengineering, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also the CEO of the Novo Nordisk Center for Biosustainability in Denmark, working in this capacity since 2011. He has co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed research articles and has authored four textbooks.
Palsson’s research includes the development of methods to analyze metabolic dynamics (flux-balance analysis, and modal analysis), and the formulation of complete models of selected cells (the red blood cell, E. coli, CHO cells, and several human pathogens). He sits on the editorial broad of several leading peer-reviewed microbiology, bioengineering, and biotechnology journals. Palsson is the author of over 40 U.S. patents, the co-founder of several biotechnology companies, and holds several major biotechnology awards.