Episode 36 of the Coworking Chronicles has us traveling to visit The Engine, Part 2..
The Engine is an incubator & accelerator supporting Tough Tech, the transformational science and engineering that solves the world’s most important challenges.
We caught up with Bernardo Cervantes from Concerto Biosciences, Naren Tallapragada from Tessel Bio, and Joseph Klim & Peter Ash from Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals on this segment..
🧬 Concerto Biosciences is unlocking billions of years of evolutionary knowledge through microbial ecology, turning it into next-gen therapeutics, skincare solutions, and food ingredients. Their robotic system builds millions of microbial combinations per day
🧠 Tessel Bio is training foundation models of inflammation to design drugs for chronic diseases like COPD, conditions affecting hundreds of millions worldwide. They just landed a collaboration with Sanofi and an ARPA-H award
💊 Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals is developing compounds targeting Tau pathology in Alzheimer’s, with a Phase I trial on track for 2027, plus a promising ALS program, both going after protein aggregation upstream
🏗️ What’s happening right now at each company? 🏗️
Concerto Biosciences is actively seeking partners in next-gen ingredient discovery. If microbial ecology resonates with your R&D roadmap, they want to talk.
Their team is watching Kano Therapeutics and Anvil Diagnostics
Tessel Bio is in a moment of intense growth, scaling collaborations across pharma, academia, and government, and hiring talent who wants to be on the front lines of AI-driven biology.
Their team is watching NOETIK, who just announced a large collaboration with GSK
Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals is deep in IND-enabling activities, actively pursuing partnerships to build out a proper clinical development plan for both their Alzheimer’s and ALS programs.
Their team is watching Dewpoint Therapeutics and QurAlis
🏙️ Why Boston and why The Engine? 🏙️
All three teams pointed to the same thing: The Engine puts robotics shops, electronics, 3D printing, wet labs, and a community of fellow tough tech builders under one roof. MIT, Harvard, and other top universities down the street don’t hurt either!
The winter tour continues with MGMT Boston. More from The Engine coming in the weeks ahead!