New investment led by Dimension Capital and the addition of industry veterans to the leadership team mark a year of rapid commercial traction.

PALO ALTO, Calif.: Ridge Biotechnologies (Ridge Bio), a biotechnology company pioneering enzyme and conditionally-activated drug design to power the next wave of precision therapeutics, today announced additional investment, bringing capital raised to approximately $38M. The upsized seed round was anchored by Dimension Capital, joining founding investor Sutter Hill Ventures (SHV), which incubated the company prior to its launch in the fall of last year, and Overlap Holdings, which participated in the initial oversubscribed seed fundraise. Ridge Bio will use the capital to support its new partnerships, scale its data-generation and machine learning platforms, broaden its bioconjugation enzyme and linker portfolio, and advance internal discovery programs toward the company's longer-term goal of developing a new class of enzyme-based therapeutics.

"We’ve moved quickly over the last year to demonstrate the potential of our technologies to improve therapeutic indices and ultimately benefit patients," said Weston Kightlinger, PhD, founder and CEO of Ridge Bio. “Our recent animal studies show that ADCs made with our NativeLink-AXC™ enzyme had several-fold lower toxicity than approved ADCs with improved efficacy, using the same antibody and payload amount. We’ve also demonstrated the generalizability of our platform to cutting-edge drug classes where precision assembly and release are even more important, including bispecific, peptide, degrader, and radio conjugates. This is why drug developers are bringing us targets they couldn’t safely reach, molecules they want to improve, and designs they couldn’t build in other ways. Our partners and our team are energized by these results, and this capital lets us meet that demand and double down on that momentum."

Ridge Bio uses proprietary machine learning models informed by high-throughput, cell-free experimentation to design precision enzymes and targeted drug delivery systems. The approach generates up to a million-fold more sequence-function data than conventional methods and allows for the design of bioconjugate drugs with improved or novel functionality. The company's initial products are NativeLink™ enzymes, a line of designed enzymes that attach diverse payloads to proteins site-specifically and homogeneously without altering sequence, disulfide bonds, glycans, or upstream manufacturing; ProTrigger™ linkers, a platform for designing protease-cleavable linkers that release therapeutic payloads only in target tissues; and Catalytic Medicines™, a new class of precision enzyme-based therapeutics.

Commercial Momentum and Investor Conviction

Ridge Bio has added several new partnerships over the past year, working with leading biotechs to apply NativeLink™ enzymes and ProTrigger™ linkers to their bioconjugate drug programs. The agreements span multiple modalities and reflect rising demand for technologies that improve therapeutic indices without forcing changes to established antibody manufacturing and providing access to targets that have been difficult to reach with conventional ADCs.

“We are excited to partner with Ridge Bio as they build a next-generation conjugate medicines platform grounded in computational design. By engineering built-to-spec enzymes and linker systems, Ridge aims to enable new targets and mechanisms of action while delivering superior stability, biodistribution, and tissue selectivity to widen the therapeutic window,” said Nan Li, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Dimension Capital.

“Ridge has achieved an extraordinary rate of technological innovation and commercial traction, and we're excited to welcome the Dimension team and others as we continue to support and scale the company,” said Keith Loebner, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures.

Industry Recognition

Ridge Bio was honored with the 2026 SynBioBeta Rising Star Award, recognizing emerging leaders whose work is reshaping the field of synthetic biology. Founder and CEO Weston Kightlinger accepted the award on behalf of the Ridge Bio team.

Hans Wandall, MD, PhD, who nominated Ridge Bio for the award, said, “Precision targeting and machine learning are progressing at an extraordinary pace, but the approach that Ridge is taking is truly unique and the level of innovation is beyond what I am seeing across industry and academia.”

“There are no do-overs, the magic only happens when you bring together the absolute best people you can find to steer cutting-edge capabilities from several fields towards a compelling market... Developing technologies to move the needle on safety and efficacy for patient benefit, that’s what really assembles and drives a team like this,” said Kightlinger.

Leadership Team Expansion

Ridge Bio has appointed Romas Kudirka, PhD, as Vice President of ADCs. Dr. Kudirka brings more than 15 years of experience in antibody-drug conjugate development, most recently as Head of ADCs at Santa Ana Bio and Director of Chemistry and Bioconjugation at Bolt Biotherapeutics. His earlier work spans Catalent, Redwood Bioscience, and the Novartis Research Foundation. At Ridge Bio, he leads the translation of NativeLink™ enzymes and ProTrigger™ linker technologies into partner ADC programs.

Ridge Bio has also appointed Grant Blouse as a Scientific Advisor. Dr. Blouse brings more than 25 years of biopharmaceutical leadership spanning early discovery through clinical development across autoimmunity, hematology, and oncology. Grant has served as Chief Scientific Officer of TheraPaint, Chief Scientific Officer of Catalyst Biosciences, and Program Lead at Novo Nordisk. Dr. Blouse is a world-leading expert in enzyme-based therapeutics and advises Ridge Bio on strategy for the ProTrigger™ linkers and Catalytic Medicines™ products.

Grant joins Ridge Bio’s distinguished scientific advisory board that includes Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD (Stanford University, 2022 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry); Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD (MIT/HHMI); Michael Jewett, PhD (Stanford University), the company's academic co-founder and SAB chair; Gabe Kwong, PhD (Georgia Tech); Mandana Honu, PhD (Fathom Therapeutics and Sutter Hill Ventures, formerly Protillion Biosciences); Hans Wandall, MD, PhD (University of Copenhagen); and Vesna Mitchell, PhD (formerly Codexis).

About Ridge Biotechnologies

Ridge Biotechnologies is a biotechnology company pioneering enzyme and conditionally-activated drug design to enable the next generation of therapeutics. Based in Palo Alto, Ridge Bio uses proprietary machine learning models informed by massive, purpose-built datasets generated from cell-free experimentation to equip drug developers with modular systems that improve stability, manufacturability, and therapeutic performance while laying the foundation for new classes of enzyme-based therapies. Ridge Bio is backed by Sutter Hill Ventures, Overlap Holdings, Dimension Capital, and other leading investors. For more information, please visit www.ridgebio.com.

Fonte: Business Wire