Harnessing
Hidden Immunity.

Dr. Lou is a microbiologist and bioinformatician with over a decade of research experience in microbiology. Her research centers on leveraging large-scale genomic sequencing and computational biology to uncover microbe-host interactions and develop novel therapeutics for immune-related diseases. Dr. Lou obtained her PhD in microbiology from UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Dr. Jill Banfield. In 2023, Dr. Lou was selected as an Entrepreneurial Fellow at UC Berkeley and was subsequently awarded a $1M non-dilutive grant in 2024 to launch Sift Biosciences, a biotech company developing T-cell-targeted therapies informed by microbial immunity. Dr. Lou's contributions to life sciences have been recognized by Forbes, which named her to its 30 Under 30 list, and by the American Cancer Society, which selected her as a BrightEdge Fellow.

Maddie is an immunologist with over 10 years of preclinical immunotherapy drug discovery and development experience in biotech startups and biopharma at notable companies like Juno Therapeutics, Tune Therapeutics, Celgene, and Bristol Myers Squibb. There, she developed extensive experience leading cross-functional teams and taking early-stage platforms from concept to IND-enabling work in both oncology and autoimmune diseases. Her research focuses on identifying modalities that enhance immune cell functionality and on building and leading high-throughput preclinical drug discovery pipelines that have accelerated the development of novel cancer and autoimmune immunotherapies, culminating in five issued or pending patents. Prior to co-founding Sift, she was the lead author of a preprint from Modulus Therapeutics describing a pooled screening platform she pioneered in natural killer (NK) cells to rapidly identify CAR signaling domains that improve NK persistence in solid tumor settings, work that was subsequently acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks in 2024.

Andy is an immunologist with over two decades of experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, specializing in cancer biology, immunology, drug discovery, and clinical development. Over the past 8 years, he has led and contributed to multiple programs in drug- and cell-based cancer immunotherapies, with deep expertise in T-cell and tumor immunology, autologous and allogeneic cell therapies, CRISPR-based genome editing, mRNA- and peptide-based vaccine technologies, multiparameter flow cytometry, single-cell sequencing, and functional assay development. At PACT Pharma, Andy was a key architect of a first-in-class, non-viral CRISPR-based T-cell receptor replacement platform for personalized T-cell therapy targeting cancer neoantigens, contributing to early proof-of-concept studies, IND-enabling work, and managing the team responsible for patient-specific TCR verification in a Phase 1 trial. He also played a central role in collaborative studies with UCLA, characterizing neoantigen-specific CD8⁺ T-cell responses in patients receiving immune checkpoint blockade, uncovering immune correlates of durable clinical benefit.

Marcela is a molecular biologist and cell engineer with over 8 years of research experience in pediatric oncology and advanced cell therapy development. She earned her PhD in Molecular Biology from the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (IPICYT) in Mexico, where she published over five high-impact research papers on the oxidative stress response in Candida glabrata. She completed her postdoctoral training at UCSF in the Sweet-Cordero Lab, where she developed CRISPR-based functional genomics tools and tumor progression and metastasis models to study non-coding RNAs in pediatric sarcomas. During this time, she secured five consecutive years of competitive research grant funding in pediatric oncology from the Sunbeam Foundation and an international fellowship from UC MEXUS, and was honored with the Monarch Award for Outstanding Research Proposal. In 2023, she joined AmplifyBio, where she contributed to the development of TCR-T cell therapies from discovery to IND-enabling phases, including engineering primary human T cells, creating regulatory-compliant safety assays, and successfully transferring these methods to manufacturing teams for clinical readiness.

MC is a seasoned bench scientist with over 15 years’ experience extracting biological insights from complex systems. She began her career in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Montana State University, where she worked with mouse models in a BSL-3 facility to investigate candidate prophylactic therapies for Category A select agents, gaining early exposure to immune mechanisms under high-containment conditions. She then spent 8 years as a researcher and lab manager in Blake Wiedenheft’s CRISPR lab, contributing to multiple impactful studies at the intersection of structural biology, biochemistry, and host–pathogen interactions. Over the past 5 years, MC has applied this foundation to drug discovery in startup environments, advancing a neuroimmune drug discovery program at Arcadia Science through rigorous assay development and mechanistic in vivo studies. Across roles, she brings deep expertise in biophysical and biochemical assays, experimental design, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.