Prellis Biologics
Bioprints lymph node organoids for AI-powered antibody discovery
Website: https://prellisbio.com/
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Name | Prellis Biologics |
| Tagline | Bioprints lymph node organoids for AI-powered antibody discovery |
| Headquarters | Berkeley, CA, USA |
| Founded | 2016 [Prellis Biologics website] |
| Stage | Pre-IPO |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry | Healthtech |
| Technology | Biotech / Life Sciences |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Solo Founder |
| Funding Label | Undisclosed |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://prellisbio.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prellis-biologics/
- X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/PrellisBio
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
Prellis Biologics is a pre-IPO biotech using proprietary bioprinting to create functional human lymph node organoids, a platform that has secured multi-target discovery deals with Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb [PR Newswire, September 2025] [Businesswire, January 2022]. The company's wedge is speed and biological fidelity, aiming to replace animal models and accelerate therapeutic antibody generation by integrating its synthetic immune system with AI. Founded in 2016 by Dr. Melanie Matheu to address resolution limitations in bioprinting, the company is now led by CEO Mike Nohaile, a former senior leader from Generate Biomedicines and Amgen [BioSpace] [Prellis Biologics]. Its business model is B2B, partnering with pharmaceutical companies to de-risk and accelerate early-stage discovery, backed by investors including Khosla Ventures and Celesta [Prellis Biologics]. Over the next 12-18 months, the key watchpoints are the progression of the Lilly collaboration, the expansion of its computational biology and antibody discovery teams as indicated by recent hiring, and any further moves toward a public listing.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Key partnership and leadership facts are reported by press releases; founding and investor details are from company sources.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Pre-IPO |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry / Vertical | Healthtech |
| Technology Type | Biotech / Life Sciences |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Solo Founder |
| Funding | Undisclosed |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
Prellis Biologics was founded in October 2016 by Dr. Melanie Matheu to address a specific technical bottleneck in the field of bioprinting [Prellis Biologics]. The company's founding premise centered on the inability of existing technologies to print at the resolution and speed required to replicate functional human tissue systems, a limitation Dr. Matheu aimed to solve with a novel photolithography-based approach.
The company is headquartered in Berkeley, California, and has operated as a private entity since its founding. A significant operational milestone was the appointment of Mike Nohaile, PhD, as CEO, a move announced in conjunction with a strategic partnership in September 2025 [PR Newswire, September 2025]. Nohaile's background includes senior leadership roles at Generate Biomedicines, Amgen, and Novartis [BioSpace]. Dr. Matheu remains a board member of the company [Lyric Bio].
The company's development timeline is punctuated by two major pharmaceutical validation events. In January 2022, Prellis announced a Collaboration and License Agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb to apply its EXIS™ platform for antibody therapeutics and target discovery [Businesswire, January 2022]. This was followed in September 2025 by a multi-target drug discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly, which explicitly includes challenging target classes like GPCRs [PR Newswire, September 2025]. These partnerships bookend a period of technology development and commercial outreach.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Foundational dates and key executive appointments are sourced from company materials and press releases; the Bristol Myers Squibb agreement is corroborated by a business wire release. The Eli Lilly partnership is recent and publicly announced.
Product and Technology
MIXED
The core of Prellis Biologics is its EXIS™ (Externalized Immune System) platform, a synthetic, animal-free system designed to replicate human immune biology for therapeutic antibody discovery [Prellis Biologics]. The company's foundational technology is a proprietary bioprinting method that uses holographic two-photon photolithography to create three-dimensional lymph node organoids (LNO™) [Prellis Biologics]. The company claims this approach is 100 times faster than competitor bioprinters and achieves 10 to 100 times better resolution, enabling the fabrication of complex vascularized tissue structures at a nanometer scale [Prellis Biologics].
This bioprinting capability is applied to generate functional lymph node organoids populated with immune cells from human donors. The platform then uses these organoids to produce fully human antibody candidates, a process the company states can be completed in three to four weeks [PR Newswire, September 2025]. The workflow integrates what the company calls its "AntiGen AI" platform, which is used to analyze and triage the resulting antibody sequences for therapeutic potential [PR Newswire, September 2025]. The intended value proposition is a dramatic acceleration in early-stage discovery, coupled with the biological relevance of a human-derived system, which aims to de-risk later-stage development compared to traditional animal models.
Publicly available job postings indicate the company is actively building out the computational and data infrastructure supporting this platform. Open roles for a Bioinformatician specializing in next-generation sequencing and structural modeling, and a Scientific Data Platform Architect for antibody discovery, point to a tech stack focused on integrating wet-lab biological data with AI-driven analysis pipelines (inferred from job postings) [Prellis Biologics careers]. The platform's primary commercial application, as evidenced by announced partnerships, is as a discovery engine for large pharmaceutical partners seeking novel antibody therapeutics.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core platform claims sourced from company materials; partnership and timeline details corroborated by a single press release. Technical performance claims (speed, resolution) are unverified by independent sources.
Market Research and Opportunity
PUBLIC The market for human antibody discovery platforms is being reshaped by a push to de‑risk preclinical development and accelerate timelines, a pressure that gives Prellis Biologics its strategic opening.
Quantifying the total addressable market for a platform like EXIS™ requires looking at the broader therapeutic antibody market it serves. According to a 2023 report by Grand View Research, the global monoclonal antibodies market was valued at approximately $210.1 billion and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.3% through 2030 [Grand View Research, 2023]. This figure, while illustrative of the end‑market size, encompasses commercialized drugs. A more direct analog for Prellis's service is the market for preclinical drug discovery technologies, which includes in vitro models and AI‑driven discovery tools. A separate analysis by MarketsandMarkets estimated the global drug discovery market, which includes these technologies, at $81.2 billion in 2023 and forecast it to reach $138.5 billion by 2028 [MarketsandMarkets, 2023]. Within this, the specific wedge for human‑relevant, animal‑free immune system models is nascent but growing, driven by several converging forces.
Key demand drivers are well‑documented in industry literature. The high failure rate of drug candidates in clinical trials, often attributed to poor translatability from animal models to humans, creates a persistent need for more predictive preclinical systems [Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2021]. Concurrently, regulatory momentum is building toward reducing animal testing. The U.S. FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed in 2022, explicitly allows for the use of certain alternative test methods, including cell‑based assays and bioprinted tissues, in drug development [U.S. Congress, 2022]. This regulatory shift lowers adoption barriers for platforms like Prellis's. Furthermore, the complexity of novel drug targets, such as G‑protein‑coupled receptors (GPCRs) and other membrane proteins, which are difficult to study with traditional methods, creates a specific technical need that organoid‑based discovery can address [Prellis Biologics website].
Adjacent and substitute markets include both competing technological approaches and broader service models. Traditional antibody discovery relies heavily on animal immunization (e.g., mouse hybridoma) and phage display, which remain entrenched but face the aforementioned translational gaps. A growing substitute market is in silico computational antibody design, pursued by companies like Nabla Bio and Generate Biomedicines, which uses AI to generate sequences without physical immune repertoires. Prellis's model, which combines a physical, biologically diverse immune response with AI for refinement, positions itself as a hybrid between pure wet‑lab and pure dry‑lab approaches. The company's collaborations with Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb suggest its serviceable obtainable market initially targets large pharmaceutical partners with specific, challenging discovery programs [PR Newswire, September 2025] [Businesswire, January 2022].
Monoclonal Antibodies Market (2030 projection) | 210.1 | $B
Drug Discovery Market (2028 projection) | 138.5 | $B
The chart above, based on third‑party analyst reports, frames the substantial end‑markets that Prellis's platform aims to serve. The gap between the large, mature antibody market and the growing drug discovery technology segment highlights the value capture opportunity for tools that improve upstream R&D efficiency. Prellis's recent Lilly partnership, focusing on multiple targets including GPCRs, is a concrete signal of early market penetration within this broader landscape [PR Newswire, September 2025].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing figures are from third‑party analyst reports (Grand View Research, MarketsandMarkets) and represent analogous, broad markets. Specific TAM/SAM for lymph node organoid platforms is not publicly quantified. Demand drivers and regulatory changes are cited from academic and legislative sources.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
Prellis Biologics competes in a specialized wedge of the antibody discovery market, where its primary differentiation is the use of bioprinted human lymph node organoids as a discovery engine, rather than purely computational or animal-based methods.
Given the available data, a direct comparison with named competitors is limited. The structured facts list Nabla Bio and Generate Biomedicines as competitors, but specific details on their positioning, funding, or differentiators are not publicly available from the cited sources. Therefore, a competitor comparison table is omitted. The analysis proceeds with the confirmed competitive context from partnerships and technology claims.
The competitive map for human antibody discovery is segmented by approach. On one side are computational design platforms like those from Generate Biomedicines and Nabla Bio, which use generative AI and protein language models to design antibodies in silico. On the other are traditional animal-based immunization and display technologies (e.g., phage display). Prellis positions itself between these segments, using a physical, biology-first platform,the EXIS™ system,to generate antibodies from a functional human immune system in vitro. Adjacent substitutes include other organoid or tissue-on-a-chip companies developing disease models, though few are focused specifically on lymph node biology for antibody discovery [Prellis Biologics].
Prellis's defensible edge today appears to be its proprietary bioprinting technology and the resulting biological dataset. The company claims its holographic two-photon photolithography is 100 times faster than competitors with 10-100x better resolution, enabling the creation of complex lymph node structures [Prellis Biologics]. This technical lead, if substantiated, is supported by specialized hardware and process knowledge. The edge is durable if the platform consistently produces high-quality, diverse antibodies that are difficult to replicate computationally or with simpler organoid methods. Partnerships with Bristol Myers Squibb [Businesswire, January 2022] and Eli Lilly [PR Newswire, September 2025] provide early validation and could create a data moat, as each collaboration likely generates proprietary immune response data.
However, the company is exposed in several areas. Its technology is capital- and equipment-intensive, which may limit scaling speed compared to asset-light computational competitors. The appointment of a new CEO with a background at Generate Biomedicines and large pharma (Mike Nohaile) [BioSpace] suggests a recognition of the need to build commercial and operational rigor to match scientific innovation. The most significant exposure may be to fully computational platforms that can iterate at digital speed and lower cost, especially for well-understood target classes. If AI-based design accuracy reaches parity with in vitro biological diversity for most targets, Prellis's physical platform could face margin pressure.
The most plausible 18-month competitive scenario hinges on platform validation and partnership expansion. If Prellis successfully delivers on its Eli Lilly collaboration, generating lead candidates against GPCRs and other targets, it will solidify its position as a preferred partner for challenging, biology-intensive discovery. The "winner" in this scenario is Prellis, if it can translate its technical claims into a reproducible, high-throughput service that consistently beats computational design on success rates or novelty. The "loser" could be traditional animal-based discovery services, which face increasing ethical and translational hurdles. However, if computational platforms like Generate Biomedicines rapidly advance and capture the bulk of new pharma deals for simpler targets, Prellis may find its market niche narrower than anticipated.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive analysis relies on company claims for technology differentiation and announced partnerships; detailed competitor metrics are not publicly available for comparison.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
If Prellis Biologics can successfully industrialize its bioprinted lymph node platform for antibody discovery, the prize is a foundational role in the next generation of therapeutic development, moving from a service provider to a high-margin discovery engine partner for the global pharmaceutical industry.
The headline opportunity for Prellis is to become the default externalized immune system for preclinical antibody discovery, a category-defining platform that replaces animal models and traditional in vitro methods for a significant portion of the industry's pipeline. The cited evidence that this outcome is reachable, not merely aspirational, comes from the company's ability to secure strategic collaborations with two top-tier pharmaceutical partners, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly [Businesswire, January 2022] [PR Newswire, September 2025]. These deals, particularly the multi-target Lilly collaboration that includes challenging GPCR targets, signal that large pharma is willing to integrate Prellis's technology into its core discovery workflow. The company's claim of generating fully human antibodies in 3-4 weeks, if consistently validated in these partnerships, directly addresses the industry's primary pain points of speed and translational fidelity [PR Newswire, September 2025].
Growth from its current partnership base could follow several concrete paths, each with a identifiable catalyst.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform Standardization | The EXIS™ platform becomes a repeatable, high-throughput service adopted across multiple therapeutic areas within existing partners. | Successful delivery of lead candidates from the Lilly collaboration, leading to an expanded agreement. | The company's hiring focus on building out its antibody discovery and data platform teams indicates an operational shift toward scalable service delivery [Prellis Biologics careers]. |
| Pipeline Monetization | Prellis transitions from a collaboration model to owning and out-licensing a proprietary pipeline of antibody assets. | Advancement of its internal pipeline into preclinical development, attracting partnership or licensing revenue. | The company's active hiring for roles like Principal Scientist - Antibody Discovery and Scientific Data Platform Architect suggests a build-out focused on scaling and industrializing the discovery process for partners [Prellis Biologics careers]. |
| Pipeline Monetization | Prellis transitions from a collaboration fee model to owning a stake in high-value therapeutic programs it discovers internally. | Advancement of its internal pipeline into clinical trials, triggering milestone payments and royalty streams. | The company describes its "growing pipeline target[ing] high unmet patient needs across... metabolic, inflammation, and oncology disease" [Prellis Biologics careers], and its investor base includes life-science specialists like Celesta and Khosla Ventures who are accustomed to backing asset-centric biotechs. |
Compounding for Prellis would manifest as a data and biological insight flywheel. Each successful antibody discovery campaign run on the EXIS™ platform generates proprietary data on immune responses to specific antigens. This data, when fed into the company's AI systems (referenced in its AntiGen AI platform), would improve the predictive algorithms for identifying high-potential antibody candidates in future campaigns [PR Newswire, September 2025]. This creates a data moat: the platform's value increases with use, making it more efficient and accurate than new entrants. Early evidence of this flywheel starting is the company's recruitment for a Bioinformatician role focused on "turning complex data into actionable insight for our antibody discovery pipeline" [Prellis Biologics careers].
The size of the win, should the Platform Standardization scenario play out, can be framed by looking at the valuation of platform biotechs that have secured recurring pharma partnerships. For a scenario-based comparison, companies like AbCellera (which operates a discovery platform for therapeutic antibodies) reached a market capitalization of several billion dollars following its IPO, based on a portfolio of partnered programs [public filings]. A more direct, though private, comparable could be Generate Biomedicines, a competitor in the AI-driven biologics space, which was valued at approximately $1 billion in its 2022 Series C round [PitchBook]. If Prellis can secure a similar volume of high-value partnerships and demonstrate consistent candidate delivery, a valuation in the high hundreds of millions to low billions is a plausible outcome for a pre-IPO or newly public company in this scenario. This is a scenario-based illustration, not a financial forecast.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Key opportunity elements (partnerships, platform claims) are cited from press releases and company materials; growth scenarios are extrapolated from hiring patterns and investor profiles. No independent third-party validation of platform performance or financial terms.
Sources
PUBLIC
[Prellis Biologics] Dr. Melanie Matheu | Prellis Biologics | https://www.prellisbio.com/melanie-matheu
[Prellis Biologics] Careers at Prellis Biologics: Join Our Team | https://prellisbio.com/careers
[PR Newswire, September 2025] Prellis Biologics Enters Multi-Target Drug Discovery & Development Collaboration with Lilly to Advance Human Antibody Therapeutics | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prellis-biologics-enters-multi-target-drug-discovery--development-collaboration-with-lilly-to-advance-human-antibody-therapeutics-302562425.html
[Businesswire, January 2022] Prellis Biologics Announces Collaboration and License Agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220113005314/en/Prellis-Biologics-Announces-Collaboration-and-License-Agreement-with-Bristol-Myers-Squibb
[BioSpace] Prellis Biologics Appoints New CEO, Raises $35 Million in Series C Funding to use Human Immune System Biology to De-Risk and Accelerate Therapeutics Drug Discovery and Development | https://www.biospace.com/prellis-biologics-appoints-new-ceo-raises-35-million-in-series-c-funding-to-use-human-immune-system-biology-to-de-risk-and-accelerate-therapeutics-drug-discovery-and-development
[Lyric Bio] Dr. Melanie Matheu | https://www.lyric.bio/team/melanie-matheu
[Grand View Research, 2023] Monoclonal Antibodies Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report | https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/monoclonal-antibodies-market
[MarketsandMarkets, 2023] Drug Discovery Market by Process, Type, End User, Region - Global Forecast to 2028 | https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/drug-discovery-technologies-market-1084.html
[Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2021] Translational value of animal models | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41573-021-00204-6
[U.S. Congress, 2022] FDA Modernization Act 2.0 | https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/5002/text
[PitchBook] Generate Biomedicines Company Profile | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/248717-10
Articles about Prellis Biologics
- Prellis Biologics Prints Lymph Nodes for Eli Lilly — The biotech's organoid platform, which generates human antibodies in weeks, just landed a multi-target collaboration with the pharma giant.