Empowering scientists to develop better medicines through deeper understanding of disease biology.
Two kinds of systems biology have had a big impact on health. One provides great depth in terms of dynamics and spatial organization by directly observing live cells under the microscope. The other achieves great breadth through genome-scale perturbations and measurements.
Bifrost bridges the two, and also pushes the limits of both – imaging pooled libraries of hundreds of millions of cells with super-resolution and then genotyping each one.”
– Johan Paulsson, PhD
Scientific Founder
Our Story
Bifrost (biv-rost)
Noun. Norse Mythology.
The rainbow bridge of the gods
from Asgard, their home
to Midgard, the earth.
Adapting this concept to cell biology, Bifrost Biosystems aims to power efficient discoveries by optically linking deep, multiparameter single-cell phenotypes to related genes – an optical bridge to better understanding of biology.
How it began
Bifrost is a 2021 spinout from the Paulsson Lab at Harvard Medical School as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-sponsored program, the Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative (EEI), aimed at translating innovative technologies from academia. Additional optical pooled screening expertise from the Elf Lab at Uppsala University in Sweden, the Church Lab at HMS and the Blainey Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard has strengthened the technological depth and know-how of Bifrost. In late 2023, Bifrost was named in a major Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) program grant as the subcontractor responsible for delivering the core optical pooled screening instrumentation for the larger program.
Today, Bifrost continues its mission to democratize access to optical-pooled-screening technology as the tool for unlocking previously inaccessible understanding of complex biological pathways and processes.
Our team
Founders
The Bifrost team of industry leading-experts is dedicated to deciphering connections at the cellular level that propel novel biological discoveries.
Johan Paulsson, PhD
A leading researcher in single-cell dynamics, especially in method development and mathematical theory for stochastic processes.
Paul Blainey, PhD
Pioneering the integration of molecular, optical, microfluidic and computational technologies to solve pressing unmet research and medical needs.
Read Full BioShawn Marcell
A 30-year veteran with expertise leading interdisciplinary teams in technology and the life sciences.
Read Full BioGeorge Church, PhD
Geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, serial entrepreneur and pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology.
Read Full BioJohan Elf, PhD
A creative inventor of experimental methods and computational tools to study life at the molecular level
Read Full BioLeadership Team
Jonas Jarvius, PhD
Transformational life sciences leader with a proven track record of translating technologies into health solutions.
Keith Breinlinger, PhD
Engineer, inventor and experienced executive leading high-functioning multidisciplinary teams.
Jackie Lemaitre, MBA
Corporate strategist with successful track record launching new entities and commercializing novel therapies, diagnostics and tools.
Greg Kellogg, PhD
Scientist, engineer and executive with a passion for the intersection of fluidics, microfabrication and biology.
Read Full Bio