At the BIO Exhibition, Companies Unveiled New Products for AAV Manufacturing and AI-Driven Drug Development

New Technologies from 64x Bio and Fauna Bio: From Gene Therapy Manufacturing to Drug Target Discovery

At the BIO International Convention, held from June 16–19 in Boston, Massachusetts, 64x Bio and Fauna Bio unveiled their latest innovations. 64x Bio launched a new solution aimed at addressing gene therapy manufacturing bottlenecks, while Fauna Bio presented an AI-powered platform for discovering novel therapeutic targets for human diseases.

64x Bio: Tackling AAV Production Bottlenecks

64x Bio introduced the AAV Apex Suite — a set of tools designed to optimize the production of adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) used in gene therapy. The suite includes HEK293 cell lines adapted for suspension transfection and enhanced manufacturing workflows, capable of producing AAV titers exceeding 10¹⁵ viral genomes per liter (vg/L). These metrics have been validated by independent partners across multiple serotypes and payloads.

The technology originated from CEO and co-founder Alexis Rovner’s (PhD) research in George Church’s lab at Harvard. Church is also a co-founder and a member of the scientific advisory board. Founded in 2017, 64x Bio has raised over $59 million in seed funding.

“Manufacturing and scaling gene therapies turned out to be a huge challenge,” says Rovner.

The AAV Apex Suite is built on the VectorSelect platform, which includes a cellular program map identifying genetic and metabolic factors that boost productivity. Unlike traditional single-gene well-by-well screening, 64x Bio uses barcode-based high-throughput screening, enabling the simultaneous evaluation of many genetic modifications to identify the best-performing combinations.

Currently, the company collaborates with five major biopharma and CDMO partners, including Charles River Laboratories, which has integrated 64x Bio’s technology into its incubator program.

Custom projects are also supported, and the company plans to expand the AAV Apex Suite to include stable cell line manufacturing (bypassing plasmid transfection) and other vector systems, such as lentiviruses.

Initial partner feedback confirms the platform’s effectiveness.

“Gene therapy has tremendous potential, but scaling is expensive and complex. We’re working to reduce manufacturing costs so companies can pursue broader indications — and patients can gain access to life-changing treatments,” Rovner adds.

Fauna Bio: From Animal Biology to Human Therapeutics

Ashley Zehnder, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Fauna Bio, began her career as a veterinarian for exotic animals.

“I trained clinically on non-traditional species, which sparked my curiosity about how diseases manifest differently across animals and what molecular mechanisms are behind it.”

During her postdoc at Stanford, Zehnder met her co-founders Linda Goodman (CTO) and Katie Grabek (CSO). Their work focused on gene evolution and hibernation-related genes in mammals. They concluded that studying animal adaptations could reveal novel mechanisms of human resilience and repair.

Founded in 2018, Fauna Bio developed Convergence, an AI platform that powers its latest product: Fauna Brain. Convergence integrates data from the Zoonomia Consortium, UK Biobank, PubMed, and more — including transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenomic data from 292 animal species across 24 tissues and 21 time points.

By comparing mammalian genomes with extreme phenotypes — such as hibernation, regeneration, and resistance to fibrosis or cancer — the platform identifies promising therapeutic targets for humans.

Fauna Brain is a multi-agent AI system that automates tasks traditionally requiring expert intervention.

“Our team still oversees the AI, but a significant portion of routine analytics is now automated,” explains Zehnder.

This scalability enables collaboration with large pharma companies like Eli Lilly. Current projects focus on cardiovascular disease and obesity.

Fauna Bio also has its own wet lab for validation studies and is developing an in-house drug pipeline, including research into neuroprotection.

“During hibernation, tau protein phosphorylation increases — similar to early Alzheimer’s stages in humans. Yet in hibernating animals, this reverses every two weeks, and brain connections are restored. We’re investigating this neuroplasticity phenomenon,” says Zehnder.

Other internal R&D areas include retinal diseases, radiation resistance, and space health.

The company’s lead candidate, Faun1083, based on hibernation-linked genes, has shown efficacy in preclinical models of diastolic heart failure.

Conclusion

64x Bio and Fauna Bio offer cutting-edge solutions for two critical stages of biomedical development:

• 64x Bio focuses on scaling gene therapy manufacturing,
• Fauna Bio leverages evolutionary biology and AI to identify novel therapeutic targets.

Together, they represent a powerful shift toward more scalable and biologically inspired approaches in biotechnology.