Parallel Bio

About

Parallel Bio created a human 'immune system in a dish' to discover drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients. Our platform has all of the same elements as a human immune system, meaning you can test drugs and vaccines as if you were testing them in actual patients from the start. The biggest reason why 95% of new drugs fail is that they were tested in mice - but with our human platform, pharma companies will know which drugs will successfully treat patients, speeding up the process and reducing the cost. To date our platform has successfully been used to test 12 drugs, and vaccines against 8 different diseases. The company is founded by Robert DiFazio, a former Stanford R&D director with a PhD in immunology, and Juliana Hilliard, a former System1 Biosciences R&D lead with an MSc in bioengineering, both of whom have led drug discovery programs for years.

Founders

Robert DiFazioFounder

Robert is a co-founder and CEO of Parallel Bio. Previously he was Director of Strategy & Research Development at Stanford University where he oversaw a $100M scientific portfolio and ran 8 large-scale R&D programs. He also worked in global health and ran vaccine programs with GSK, the NIH, and the Danish government. He completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford, holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BS from the University of Illinois.

Juliana HilliardFounder

Juliana is a co-founder and the CSO of Parallel Bio. She previously worked at System1 Biosciences managing R&D brain organoid drug discovery teams and has extensive experience developing mini-organ systems to better model human disease and discover new drugs.