Maria Luisa Pineda is the CEO and co-founder of Envisagenics, Inc., a bioinformatics start-up company. She has led the company to obtain paying customers in RNA therapeutics, to a Small Business Innovation Research award from the National Institutes of Health, and to pre-seed investments from Accelerate Long Island, the LIET Fund, and the Breakout Labs of the Thiel Foundation.
Pineda is a cell and molecular biologist with over 10 years of research experience. She received a doctorate from the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her undergraduate studies were completed at Barry University. After receiving her doctorate, she combined science and business with her interpersonal skills by acquiring experience in technology and life sciences startup investing at Canrock Ventures and Golden Seeds LLC.
Envisagenics is a spinoff of the world-renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, specifically the laboratory of Adrian R. Krainer, a leading expert in the field of gene splicing. Krainer’s laboratory was the first to perform in-vitro splicing studies, identify the regulatory proteins of alternative splicing, and discover their involvement in cancer and genetic diseases. All of that led to proving the efficacy of RNA therapeutics to cure disease, for example, the FDA-approved Spinraza for treating spinal muscular atrophy. Under the leadership of Pineda and Martin Akerman, co-founder and CTO, Envisagenics has continued to develop its machine learning drug discovery platform and has validated its capabilities through publications, proof-of-concept studies with academia and biopharma partners, and acquisition of private and non-dilutive funding.
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