| Geoffrey von Maltzahn | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Fields: | Bioengineering |
| Alma Mater: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B.) University of California, San Diego (M.S.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.) |
| Awards: | Lemelson-MIT Student Prize (2009) National Inventors Hall of Fame Collegiate Inventors Competition Graduate Prize (2009), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Randolph G Wei Award (2003) |
Geoffrey von Maltzahn is an American biological engineer and businessman in the biotechnology and life sciences industry who has founded a number of companies including Indigo Agriculture, Sana Biotechnology, Kaleido Biosciences, Seres Therapeutics, Axcella Health, Generate Biomedicines and Tessera Therapeutics.[1] [2] [3]
Geoffrey von Maltzahn was born in Arlington, Texas, and subsequently moved to Alexandria, Virginia where he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.[4] He was awarded his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003,[5] his Master of Science degree in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2005, and his PhD from the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010.[6] His thesis advisor was Sangeeta Bhatia.[7]
Von Maltzahn is a general partner at Flagship Pioneering, a Massachusetts-based firm that creates start-ups in the healthcare and agriculture industries.[8] He joined in 2009, and focuses on inventing and building new life science companies. In the same year, he co-founded Axcella Health, a company focused on developing amino acid therapeutics. In 2010, he co-founded Seres Therapeutics[9] and served as the Chief Technology Officer until 2012.[10] In 2020, Seres’ SER-109 became the first microbiome-based drug to report positive phase 3 data.[11] This drug was approved as Vowst by FDA in 2023. In 2013, he co-founded Indigo Agriculture, a company focused on improving the microbiome of modern crops and is currently Chief Innovation Officer and a board member.[12] In 2018, he co-founded Generate Biomedicines, a generative biology company using machine learning to discover new therapeutics.[13] In the same year, he co-founded Tessera Therapeutics, a company that focuses on altering genes in the human genome using technology it calls gene writing. Tessera raised over $300m in funding in 2022.[14]
In February 2021, his company Sana Biotechnology raised the largest record IPO for a preclinical biotechnology company.[15]