Therapeutics · Tissue-targeted drug delivery
Eugit Therapeutics
A San Francisco Bay Area biotech building a T cell receptor based delivery platform meant to steer drugs to diseased tissue. It has one federal grant on record, a Y Combinator batch behind it, and no clinical trial yet.
A platform built on where a T cell already goes
Eugit Therapeutics is trying to solve a problem familiar to anyone who has taken a drug that helped one part of the body and hurt another. Most therapeutics circulate everywhere the blood goes. When the disease sits in one tissue, that is waste at best and toxicity at worst.
The company's answer, a platform it calls TAGHOME, is built on T cell receptors, the molecules T cells use to recognize where they are and what they should respond to. According to the company's own description, the platform is meant to deliver drugs “with precision to diseased tissues using T cell receptors, enhancing safety and improving efficacy.”
The first disease it has picked is inflammatory bowel disease, a chronic gut condition that, by the company's count, affects around 3.1 million adults in the United States. Broad immune suppressants remain the standard of care, and they carry broad side effects. A National Science Foundation grant abstract, written by the company, puts a number on the group it is chasing first: “the 5-10% of patients unresponsive to existing treatments,” a market it estimates at $4.65 billion.
The problem, twice stated
Eugit's public description of the problem has stayed consistent since its founding: non-specific drugs cause toxicity and clinical trial failures for patients with tissue-specific inflammatory disease. What has changed is the target disease and, with it, most of the story around how the platform gets there. That shift is worth walking through, because it shows up in the record.
Founders
Nizar Batada is the co-founder and CEO. He earned a PhD in biophysics at Stanford, did postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto and, later, in George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School, and then spent years as a group leader at the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, part of the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine. His university biography describes research into “bulk and single cell genome and transcriptome sequencing of cancer genomes” and the tumor microenvironment’s role in metastasis. Before founding Eugit, he was a senior scientist at 23andMe’s Therapeutics division, according to his Y Combinator founder profile.
George Church, the Harvard Medical School geneticist who has co-founded a long list of genomics and synthetic biology companies, is listed as co-founder and scientific advisor on both the company website and the Y Combinator page. His involvement is one of the more checkable facts in this profile: Church's role as a serial biotech co-founder is independently documented well beyond Eugit.
The company's own team page lists a third co-founder, Yoshi Fukazawa, as VP of Research, with a PhD from Kyoto University, a postdoc at Oregon Health and Science University, and prior work at Cytek Biosciences. Y Combinator’s company page, by contrast, does not list Fukazawa among Eugit’s “Active Founders,” an omission worth noting since it is the only place the two sources disagree on who counts as a founder.
A pivot from cancer to the gut
Eugit's original Y Combinator launch post, still archived on its company page, describes a different company: “a therapeutics company that is developing immune cell based therapy for treatment of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers,” using engineered gamma delta T cells taken from healthy donor blood. That post frames George Church and Nizar Batada's prior discovery of a gamma delta T cell subtype linked to good outcomes in breast cancer as the scientific basis, and cites a 2020 peer-reviewed paper Batada co-authored, published in Life Science Alliance, describing a gamma delta T cell subtype found by single cell RNA sequencing of breast tumors that was associated with good clinical outcome.
The company's current framing, reflected in its Y Combinator one-liner and its NSF grant, is different: TAGHOME as a delivery platform for small molecules or biologics, aimed first at inflammatory bowel disease rather than solid tumors. Nothing in the public record marks the exact date of that shift or explains it. The NSF award, filed under the title "Tissue specific delivery of payloads," is dated August 2024, two years after the company's Summer 2022 YC batch, and is the clearest public marker of the current direction.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| NSF SBIR Phase I award 2423571 | $275,000 to Eugit Therapeutics, Inc., PI Nizar Batada, titled "Tissue specific delivery of payloads." Start Aug 15, 2024. NSF's own award-search record lists an end date of Jul 31, 2026; a grant-consulting firm's case study of the same award lists a shorter duration, Aug 2024 to Jul 2025. | Public record |
| Y Combinator investment | Company confirms it was funded by Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch. Amount not disclosed on the company page or Y Combinator's listing. | Company-stated |
| SEC Form D | No filing found under "Eugit" in SEC EDGAR's company search as of this review. No priced venture round has been announced. | Not found |
| Founding science | Batada is senior author on a 2020 Life Science Alliance paper, "Single-cell RNA sequencing of human breast tumour-infiltrating immune cells reveals a γδ T-cell subtype associated with good clinical outcome," corrected in 2023 to add a missing co-author. It underpins the company's original cancer-immunotherapy pitch, not its current IBD platform. | Public record |
| Clinical trials | No trial for Eugit or TAGHOME found in a trials registry search as of this review. | Not found |
| FDA records | No 510(k) or PMA record found, consistent with a preclinical drug delivery platform that has not reached a device or drug filing stage. | Not found |
| Founder employment | A professional-data aggregator's records list Batada as a Principal Scientist at Gilead Sciences starting in 2024, the same year as the NSF award, with "Co-Founder" at Eugit listed as a 2022 to 2024 role. The same aggregator lists Fukazawa as a "Professional Researcher" at UCSF from 2024, alongside an unbroken "Co-Founder" listing. The company's own website and the Y Combinator page still show both as current, without a listed end date. | Differs from company page |
Read plainly: the one confirmed piece of non-dilutive funding is a single NSF SBIR Phase I grant, and even its own paper trail cannot agree on when it ends. There is real science behind the company's founding story, but it was built for a cancer program the company has since set aside. And the clearest public signal on where the founders spend their working hours points somewhere other than Eugit's own office, at least according to one third-party data source that the company has not addressed.
What to watch
- Whether Eugit applies for or wins the NIH SBIR Phase II grant that its NSF Phase I project description names as the next funding step.
- A first registered clinical trial or an IND filing for TAGHOME in inflammatory bowel disease.
- Any named pharmaceutical partner. As of this review, the company has not announced one.
- Clarification of Nizar Batada's and Yoshi Fukazawa's current time commitment to Eugit, given the conflicting employment data above.
- A Form D or other public funding disclosure beyond the NSF grant and the undisclosed Y Combinator investment.
In their words
“Eugit Therapeutics targets the issue of non-specific drugs that cause toxicity and clinical trial failures, affecting millions with tissue-specific inflammatory diseases.”
Company description, Y Combinator company page · Company-stated
“TAGHOME delivers drugs with precision to diseased tissues using T cell receptors, enhancing safety and improving efficacy.”
Company description, Y Combinator company page · Company-stated
“We are a therapeutics company that is developing immune cell based therapy for treatment of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers.”
Original company launch post, Y Combinator, 2022 · Company-stated
“Building upon the discoveries of the founders, EUGIT Therapeutics is engineering cancer-fighting immune cells known as the gamma delta T cells which overcome the limitations of existing cancer immunotherapies.”
Original company launch post, Y Combinator, 2022 · Company-stated
“My research interests lies in exploiting bulk and single cell genome and transcriptome sequencing of cancer genomes to characterise DNA repair mechanisms that contribute to mutations and study the role of tumour microenvironment in promoting metastasis.”
Dr Nizar Batada, faculty profile, University of Edinburgh · University record
“This project develops a targeted therapeutic delivery system intended to increase treatment precision and reduce adverse effects. Specifically, it aims to provide relief for the 5-10% of patients unresponsive to existing treatments, opening a market opportunity estimated at $4.65 billion.”
SBIR Phase I project description, National Science Foundation award 2423571, 2024 · Public record
“The project’s completion will enable the company to engage with pharmaceutical companies for potential partnerships and to apply for further funding through an NIH SBIR Phase II project, focusing on enhanced therapeutic applications.”
SBIR Phase I project description, quoted in an Arco Grants case study, published 2025 · Public record
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNSF award 2423571, SBIR Phase I, Tissue specific delivery of payloads
- Public recordEUGIT THERAPEUTICS, INC. organization record
- Public recordSEC EDGAR company search for "Eugit," Form D
- Public recordSingle-cell RNA sequencing of human breast tumour-infiltrating immune cells reveals a γδ T-cell subtype associated with good clinical outcome
- Public recordCorrection notice for the above paper
- University recordDr Nizar Batada faculty profile
- IndependentEugit Therapeutics company and funding profile
- IndependentEugit Therapeutics grant case study, NSF SBIR Phase I, $275,000
- IndependentNizar Batada professional profile, employment history
- IndependentYoshinori Fukazawa professional profile, employment history
- IndependentEugit Therapeutics revenue and team estimate
- CompanyEugit Therapeutics company page, team, founder profiles and original launch post
- CompanyEugit Therapeutics website, team page
- CompanyEugit Therapeutics company page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
