Startup Summary

“Radar Therapeutics makes precision-expressed mRNAs that deliver therapies to specific, diseased cells.”

While mRNA’s success in vaccines has been proven through Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech's rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, more work remains to translate this success to broader disease indications, including cancer, rare diseases, neurology, ophthalmology, and more. Enabled by novel RNA sensing technology developed at Stanford and Duke Universities, the mRNA-encoded drug is guarded by this “safety switch” that allows delivery only to diseased cells. The drug can then specifically remove or reprogram those pathogenic cells, while healthy cells are left alone. RadarTx’s treatments thus incorporate control elements that allow for rationally designed, highly precise, programmable therapies that work in previously undruggable targets.

If CRISPR can read and write genes, Radar Tx’s technology can read and write cells.

About Founder | LinkedIn |

Sophia was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in both Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. Through lived experiences, observational and clinical rotations in 5 countries, and courses in biology and STS, she realized that medicine, genome-wide association studies, biobanks, public health initiatives, and the infrastructure of biotech and medicine in general lack representation. She hopes to bring that front and center in the next revolution in therapeutic modalities (mRNA therapies).