HelixNano

Helix Nanotechnologies, otherwise known as HelixNano, is an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Helix Nanotechnologies was founded in 2013 by Finland-born Hannu Rajaniemi funded by “small angel checks from friends and family as well as grants to focus on cancer therapeutics.”¹⁾

In 2017, the company was accepted into Y Combinator.²⁾

In 2019, HelixNano announced a grant from Schmidt Futures to pursue personalized cancer vaccines. With the grant, and in collaboration with the Hacohen Laboratory at the Broad Institute and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy to use synthetic biology and machine learning to reduce the uncertainty of neoantigen design.³⁾ The project also received support from Integrated DNA Technologies' Synthetic Biology Start-up Grant Program.

In March 2020, the company pivoted to focus entirely on developing a COVID-19 vaccine.⁴⁾ According to co-founder and CEO Hannu Rajaniemi, an investor in the company told him that the pandemic “could be THE opportunity you needed” to demonstrate HelixNano's capabilities, and the company was “able to raise money from its 'extremely supportive' investors for the pivot in about about 24 hours.” Rajaniemi convinced his employees to support the pivot in part by “focusing on the broader benefit to society that a COVID-19 vaccine could provide.”

In January 2022, HelixNano received a $10 million investment from FTX's Future Fund to finance “preclinical and Phase 1 trials of a pan-variant COVID-19 vaccine.”⁵⁾

Investors in HelixNano include:^{12) 13) 14)}

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