Manifold Bio raises $40M for technology to improve drug testing

Manifold Bio, a new startup founded by one of Boston’s most prolific biotech entrepreneurs, has raised $40 million to develop a technology that could make testing cancer drugs more efficient. The company is designing a system for “barcoding” protein therapies — giving them a unique label so that dozens or hundreds of them can be tested at the same time to see which are best at targeting tumors.

The startup was originally founded in 2019 by George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and two of his former graduate students, Gleb Kuznetsov and Pierce Ogden, who are now chief executive and chief scientific officer of the company.