Kernal Biologics

Kernal is creating mRNA 2.0 therapies that work in specific cells

Y CombinatorSummer 2020ActiveHealthcareTherapeuticsArtificial IntelligenceBiotechGenomics

What they do

Problem

mRNA therapies often lack cell-specific delivery, causing off-target effects and limiting effectiveness in cancer and autoimmune disease treatment.

Solution

Kernal develops selective mRNA-LNP platforms that deliver mRNA to specific immune cells (e.g., T cells) to enable in vivo immunotherapies such as direct CAR-T programming.

Who it's for

Biopharma companies and clinical researchers developing targeted immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Founders

Yusuf Erkul

Founder

I'm co-founder and CEO of Kernal Biologics, a Boston-based biotech startup developing next-generation messenger RNA immunotherapy. Backed by Hummingbird, Amgen, Lilly, NVIDIA, HBM, NASA, and Boeing, Kernal Bio raised more than $30M. Early in my career, I worked at Merck&Co. on the discovery and development of various oncology drugs, including ZEJULA®, which got FDA approval for ovarian cancer. I hold an executive MBA from MIT Sloan, an M.D. from Hacettepe Univ. and a B.S. in Biology from MIT.

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Jeff Ozdemir

Founder

I got PhD in Molecular Genetics at UTSW Medical Center at Dallas. I moved to Boston for postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. I served as Biochemistry instructor at MIT. Then I joined Kernal as a co-founder.

Burak YILMAZ

Founder

My name is Burak Yilmaz, MS, co-founder, and lead designer of Kernal Biologics. As a synthetic biologist, I co-invented stealth and onco-selective mRNA platform technology in Kernal. Kernal is my second endeavor. Previously, I founded Sentegen/Sentebiolab which is a synthetic biology company that produces synthetic DNA for research and diagnostic purposes.