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On November 6th, we hosted the LabCentral Ignite Golden Ticket Pitch Event, sponsored by Bayer, Eli Lilly, Takeda, and Pfizer. Eleven finalist companies presented their work to the panel of esteemed judges, hoping to win one of the five Golden Tickets being awarded. A total of $250,000 was given away in one night! With a focus specifically on inclusion in biotech and with 11 companies pitching, the audience saw a range of scientific innovation that the entrepreneurs are working on.  

The Ignite Golden Ticket program, in its fifth year, provides invaluable support and access for the next generation of powerhouse biotech companies, including funding one bench for one scientist for a year. Specifically focused on those with high-potential founders who need access to resources and networks to advance their breakthrough science, the program is enormously popular amongst early-stage biotech founders.  

Each of the five winners receives a year of LabCentral lab bench space, access to LabCentral’s resources, mentorship, and community and a platform to grow and scale their innovations – all made possible by the event sponsors  

The five Golden Ticket winners were DoriNano, KiraGen Bio, Laurel Biotherapeutics, Microvitality, and SequestBio.  

Each winning company received $50,000 as a credit towards space at LabCentral, joining our robust community with access to sponsors and exciting events, plus a year-long Fellowship together with customized workshops and mentoring. The program’s offerings have evolved over the years as we find new ways to lower barriers to entry for early-stage biotech entrepreneurs from historically excluded backgrounds. 

LabCentral remains committed to inclusion in biotech and is looking forward to seeing what the five winners are able to accomplish this upcoming year and beyond! 

Interested in learning more about our Golden Ticket programs? Visit our Golden Tickets page on our website and be sure to follow LabCentral to stay up to date with our latest opportunities. 

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About DoriNano:

DoriNano is a Harvard/Wyss spinout pioneering a DNA origami–based drug delivery platform to tackle some of the hardest problems in medicine, starting with cancer immunotherapies. Our lead program, DoriVac, has shown over 90% tumor reduction as monotherapy and near-complete tumor clearance when combined with checkpoint blockade in preclinical models. Unlike conventional delivery systems, our platform offers precision, modularity, and scalability, enabling us to rapidly design new therapies for oncology and beyond. Backed by $800K in early funding and with over $50M in pending non-dilutive grant applications, DoriNano is building a new generation of smart medicines to transform patient outcomes. 

About Laurel Biotherapeutics:

Laurel Biotherapeutics is an early-stage biotech company developing next-generation antibody therapeutics targeting pathways in cardiovascular dysfunction, inflammation, and metabolism. We are addressing significant unmet needs in heart failure and cardiorenal disease, with a substantial market opportunity. Our lead program activates the natriuretic peptide pathway, a clinically validated pathway in heart failure. Unlike native peptides or full-length antibodies, we engineer single-domain antibodies (VHHs) that enable durable receptor agonism with superior biodistribution to both the heart and kidney. We combine an AI-driven antibody design platform with immunization-based discovery to rapidly generate and optimize candidates. With this dual approach, we aim to deliver first-in-class therapies that improve outcomes in acute decompensated heart failure with renal impairment, a setting with high mortality and no effective treatments. 

About Microvitality:

Microvitality is transforming how we diagnose and understand gastrointestinal disorders by unlocking access to the small intestine; the most biologically active and clinically relevant region of the gut, yet historically the most difficult to reach. Despite over 7 billion people globally suffering from gastrointestinal disorders, conditions such as Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Celiac Disease are frequently overlooked: up to 75% of IBS and 80% of Celiac cases remain undiagnosed, leading to years of untreated symptoms, harmful antibiotic misuse, and a significant financial burden. Women are underrepresented in clinical trials, despite bearing the highest disease burden, resulting in a mismatch between approved treatments and real-world patient needs. Microvitality is pioneering a novel ingestible capsule technology, which can non-invasively collect a sample from the small intestine, with the goal of delivering precision insights from the core of the GI tract, enabling earlier detection and treatment while bringing personalization, equity, and data-driven decision-making to digestive health. 

About Kiragen Bio:

KiraGen Bio is engineering smarter CAR-T cell therapies that finally work in solid tumors. While CAR-T has revolutionized blood cancers, it fails in glioblastoma and other solid tumors because the tumor microenvironment (TME) shuts down T cells, leading to relapse. Our solution is a 6-knockout allogeneic CAR-T platform that blocks multiple TME suppressive pathways simultaneously. This is purpose-built for GBM and designed to scale across solid tumors. Using KiraLOGIC, our proprietary machine learning engine trained on multiplex-edited CAR-T functional assays, we rapidly identify optimal gene edits that resist suppression and endure in hostile tumor environments. This approach delivers durable efficacy, improved safety, and 10x lower cost than current autologous CAR-T. We are advancing our lead candidate toward IND by 2027, with GBM as the first indication in a $5B market and expansion into a $300B solid tumor opportunity. Our founding team combines deep expertise in CAR-T biology, CMC, and machine learning from Beam, bluebird bio, Tome Bioscience, Harvard, and MIT. Together, we are building the first cell therapy platform designed to cure and built to endure.

About Sequest Bio:

Metastasis is responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths because clinicians lack the tools to accurately predict which patients are at the highest risk. At SequestBio, we are solving this problem with a complete theranostics engine. Our platform is the first to integrate three key pillars: it fuses a patient's multi-modal data, like genomics and imaging, with a unique functional assay that physically tests the aggressiveness of their tumor in the lab. We then analyze this combined dataset with our hybrid AI and quantum-enhanced algorithms. This allows us to not only predict site-specific metastasis and therapy resistance with far greater accuracy but also to discover the novel drug targets needed to treat these high-risk patients. We're not just an idea; we're launching pilot studies with MD Anderson and UMass, and have foundational IP filed.