Funding profile · Oncology therapeutics

Catena Biosciences

A Berkeley protein conjugation company with one documented equity round, one small federal grant and no Form D on file with the SEC. The capital picture has to be assembled from announcements rather than filings.

$2.35MSeed extension announced May 8, 2024, the only round with a dollar figure from a primary source
$299,379NIH SBIR Phase I, the only federal award on record
0Form D notices filed with the SEC as of Sep 22, 2026
$10M+Valuation reported by Berkeley News in July 2021, company-sourced

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2021 Y Combinator, Summer 2021 batch Not disclosed Y Combinator YC listing
Jul 2021 Early venture financing, unnamed Valued at over $10M Not named Berkeley News
Sep 2021 to Sep 2023 NIH SBIR Phase I, 1R43DK131833-01 $299,379 NIDDK, non-dilutive NIH RePORTER
May 2023 BrightEdge Golden Ticket, in-kind One year of free lab and office space BrightEdge, American Cancer Society; plus WuXi Biologics program credits Bakar Labs
By Jan 2024 Investor roster disclosed, no amount Not disclosed Amgen, Social Impact Capital, California Innovation Fund, Gaingels, NYBC Ventures, MBX Capital, Reinforced Ventures, American Cancer Society Company release
May 2024 Seed extension $2.35M Existing: California Innovation Fund, Civilization Ventures, Pioneer Fund. New: LongeVC, Freeflow Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, BrightEdge Company and investor
Feb 2023, reported A $5M seed appears only in aggregator data, taking a claimed total to $7.3M $5.0M claimed BlueYard Capital, Iaso Ventures, Pioneer Fund, SNR, per aggregator Unconfirmed

What the public filings show

SEC EDGAR · no Form D on file · checked Sep 22, 2026

Full text search
Queries for Catena Biosciences and CatenaBio, form type D: zero hits
Company search
Six registrants whose names begin with Catena; none is this company
Implication
No offering amount, no investor count, no related persons list, no CIK
Legal note
Issuers raising under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D file no Form D, so the absence is not proof that no money moved

NIH RePORTER · 1R43DK131833-01 · awarded Sep 17, 2021

Amount
$299,379
Activity
R43, SBIR Phase I
Institute
NIDDK
Principal investigator
Marco Jackson Lobba
Project
Protein conjugation for antigen specific treatment of thyroid autoimmune diseases
Period
Sep 17, 2021 to Sep 16, 2023 · no Phase II follow on

Reading the record

  1. There is no filing trail at all.Most venture backed US startups leave at least one Form D. Catena has raised for five years and left none. Everything an outsider knows about the equity comes from press releases, an investor blog post and aggregator databases, none of which carry a penalty for being wrong.
  2. The only hard number is small.$2.35 million in May 2024 plus $299,379 of NIH money is roughly $2.65 million that can be tied to a primary source. For context, the August 2025 Nature Reviews Drug Discovery survey that lists Catena’s CATB-101 also notes that Callio Therapeutics raised $187 million in a single round for the same dual payload thesis.
  3. The bridge has not landed.The May 2024 announcement said the extended runway sets the stage for generating data in support of a Series A later that year. As of September 22, 2026, 28 months later, no Series A has been announced and no new Form D has appeared.
  4. Two investor lists that do not reconcile.The January 2024 release names Amgen, Social Impact Capital, California Innovation Fund, Gaingels, NYBC Ventures, MBX Capital, Reinforced Ventures and the American Cancer Society. The May 2024 release names California Innovation Fund, Civilization Ventures, Pioneer Fund, LongeVC, Freeflow Ventures, Caffeinated Capital and BrightEdge. Only California Innovation Fund and the American Cancer Society arm appear on both. Neither list is dated to a specific round, so the overlap cannot be resolved from public sources.
  5. The federal money funded a program the company no longer leads with.The single NIH award was for Graves’ disease. The pipeline page and every 2024 and 2025 poster are oncology. The autoimmune work has no visible successor grant, publication or partner.
  6. An aggregator total is circulating without a source.One profile site reports $7.3 million across two rounds, including a $5 million seed dated February 1, 2023 with investors who appear in no company release. No primary document supports it, and the figure should not be treated as established.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Lead asset CATB-101, dual payload conjugate, topoisomerase plus tubulin inhibitor, preclinical as of August 2025 Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
Regulatory No registered trial, no IND announced, no FDA record Not found
Partnerships Company cites work with top pharmas and a 40,000 fold scale up in partnered work. No partner named. Company-stated
Team Y Combinator listing shows 7 employees. Senior hires in 2023 from Bayer and Kite Pharma. Company-stated
Operating status Site live Sep 22, 2026. CEO on the agenda at the 17th World ADC in San Diego for Oct 13, 2026, promising a first non-human primate toxicity report. Last press release April 2024. Conference record

What to watch

  • A first Form D. It would be the first primary document of any equity raise in the company’s history.
  • A Series A announcement, or an explanation of why the 2024 bridge did not lead to one.
  • Non-human primate toxicity data at World ADC on October 13, 2026, which is the gate a partner would need cleared.
  • Any named pharma licensee, which would change the capital requirement entirely.
  • A new federal award. The company has drawn none since the Phase I ended in September 2023.

The Catena Biosciences story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Sensible Biotechnologies: Shared investor: Blueyard Capital. A platform that grows therapeutic mRNA inside engineered cells instead of making it in a tube
  • Alixia: Shared investor: Gaingels. A San Francisco drug discovery company that treats a tumor as an ecosystem rather than as a single mutation
  • Kernal Biologics: Shared investor: Civilization Ventures. A Boston company designing messenger RNA that switches on only inside the cells it is aimed at, now building an in vivo CAR T therapy on that idea
  • Dorian Therapeutics: Shared investor: Gaingels. A Stanford spinout that built small molecule blockers of USP16, the enzyme that strips a silencing mark off histone H2A, and pointed them at the arthritic knee

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR full text and company searches for Form D noticesSEC · run Sep 22, 2026
  2. Public recordNIH RePORTER award 1R43DK131833-01NIH NIDDK · Sep 2021 to Sep 2023
  3. Public recordClinicalTrials.gov, FDA device databases and Justia Patents searches, no recordsAccessed Sep 22, 2026
  4. IndependentDual-payload ADCs move into first oncology clinical trials, Asher MullardNature Reviews Drug Discovery · August 2025
  5. IndependentBerkeley startup aims to be a game changer in autoimmune disease therapyBerkeley News · Jul 21, 2021
  6. IndependentLongeVC Joins CatenaBio’s $2.35M Seed Extension RoundLongeVC · May 7, 2024
  7. IndependentARIZ and Catena Awarded Golden Tickets to Bakar Labs, Sponsored by ACS BrightEdge FundBakar Bio Labs · May 2023
  8. IndependentMarco Lobba speaker page and Catena Bio sponsor page, 17th World ADC San DiegoWorld ADC · accessed Sep 22, 2026
  9. CompanyBiotech Startup CatenaBio Raises $2.35 Million in Seed Extension RoundBakar Labs and CatenaBio · May 8, 2024
  10. CompanyCatenaBio Selected to Present at the Berkeley Bio Startup Showcase at JPM, with investor listBusiness Wire · Jan 4, 2024
  11. CompanyCatena Biosciences Expands Executive Leadership TeamBusiness Wire · Aug 2, 2023
  12. CompanyCatenaBio pipeline, partners and news pages, and Y Combinator listingAccessed Sep 22, 2026
  13. UnconfirmedCatena Biosciences funding summary reporting $7.3M across two roundsStartup Intros aggregator · accessed Sep 22, 2026

Compiled from SEC, NIH, FDA and other public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. No Form D notice for this issuer appears on SEC EDGAR; amounts shown are drawn from company announcements and press reports and are labeled accordingly. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Catena Biosciences. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.