Entrepreneurship

Mystiphage Logo

About Us

Operating at the cutting edge of synthetic biology innovation, our Entrepreneurship team has developed a comprehensive 12-year business plan that guides our long-term growth trajectory. Having identified our competitive advantages and validated market-ready solutions, our team is now positioned to advance our pipeline through diversification into electroceuticals for targeted phage delivery. Our commitment to commercialization reflects our dedication to staying ahead of infectious disease threats while building a future-ready platform for personalized medicine.

Our detailed analysis includes transparent product development timelines, resource requirements, risk assessments, and a detailed commercialization roadmap. For potential investors, we provide a concise executive summary outlining our problem statement, market opportunity, and value proposition. Our work is strengthened under the mentorship of individuals from leading academic institutions, whose ongoing research and collaboration enhance our scientific foundation and accelerate our innovation pipeline. Additionally, our thorough evaluation assesses the beneficial and detrimental long-term impacts of our business to provide a holistic perspective on Mystiphage as an industry leader.

iGEM Entrepreneurship Criteria

This section outlines the criteria we followed for the iGEM entrepreneurship component. While this provides a high-level overview of our approach, we recommend reviewing all deliverables for comprehensive details.

Have we identified our target customers and unmet market needs that existing solutions fail to address?

We have identified potential customers across multiple market tiers. Tier 1 customers include clinical phage laboratories such as Davidson Lab and Maxwell Lab at the University of Toronto, plus prospects at UC San Diego’s IPATH center and Georgia’s Eliava Institute. We have also identified strategic opportunities with biotech startups like BiomX, SNIPIR Biome, and Phiogen that currently lack internal AI capabilities. Additionally, our team has focused on critical unmet needs that existing solutions fail to address. The phage matching process currently takes a median of 171 days, with only 9.4% of requests resulting in treatment at Belgium’s Queen Astrid Military Hospital. Major gaps include a lack of centralized phage libraries, unavailable lytic phages for specific pathogens, coordination delays between laboratories, and unstandardized screening protocols. Our stakeholder validation from leading phage research centers, including Eliava Institute and Queen Astrid Phage Center, confirmed strong market demand. No existing solution combines generative AI-powered receptor-binding protein design with wet-lab validation, positioning us to uniquely reduce development timelines from six months to hours.

Has the team shown that their solution is possible, scalable, and inventive?

Through our wetlab and drylab validation cycle, we have proven that our proprietary pipeline, which includes our generative model PHORAGER, can generate feasible results and validate them for biological function. Our solution becomes increasingly scalable through a generative RBP bank - a library of validated designs that can be recombined for future clinical needs. In vitro results fine-tune our models, lessening wet lab validation requirements over time as the AI learns from each successful design. Our dual-layer platform combines predictive bioinformatics with generative protein models to create receptor-binding proteins that enable phages to bind specific bacterial targets, reducing design time from months to hours. Academic literature and our interviews with academic stakeholders confirmed that our AI-driven phage sequence modification, alongside protein interaction validation, is a new arena in synthetic biology, especially phage therapy. We aim to be at the forefront of combining generative AI-powered receptor-binding protein design with wet-lab validation, enabling rapid custom phage design even when no natural match exists.

Do we have a comprehensive product development plan with realistic milestones, timelines, resource requirements, and risk assessments?

Structured Timeline and Milestones

Our development follows a structured 12-year timeline with three distinct phases. Phase 1 focuses on building the alpha AI platform, securing biobank access, and establishing wet-lab protocols. Phase 2 advances to beta launch, seed funding, and initial customer agreements. By Phase 3, we target commercial rollout in compassionate-use countries with established regulatory partnerships. Key milestones include Q1-Q2 Year 1 core AI model training on E. coli phage-host datasets, Q2-Q3 wet lab pipeline setup, Q3 biobank agreements, and Q4 provisional patent filing. This progression demonstrates logical sequencing from technical development through regulatory preparation to market entry.

Resource Requirements and Allocation

Our resource requirements include phage-bacteria interaction datasets from Davidson and Maxwell Labs, cloud GPU access through AWS, University of Toronto BioZone lab space, and IP strategy support from The Hatchery accelerator. Year 1 upfront costs total approximately CAD 305,900-328,950, covering lab equipment (CAD 8,200), documentation costs (CAD 80,000), and operational expenses.

Financial Projections and Revenue Model

Under the base case scenario, our hybrid revenue model charges a fixed base price of $5K-$ 8K per validated RBP, with compassionate-use cases often requiring 3-5 RBPs per patient, resulting in $15,000-$ 40,000 per purchase. In addition, we secure an 8% royalty on net revenue from phages in breakthrough therapies that are built using Mystiphage-designed RBPs.

Competitor Analysis

Aside from companies working purely on phage therapy, there are also a couple of companies who are closer to Mystiphage in its AI-driven approach to targeting antibacterial resistance, here we analyze a few of these key competitors:

PhageAI (Poland): PhageAI offers an AI-powered platform for in silico characterization of bacteriophages. Their technology reduces the time required to analyze phage genomes from several days to under an hour, facilitating rapid identification of suitable phages for therapeutic applications.
Locus Biosciences (USA): Locus Biosciences employs machine learning to analyze high-throughput data on phage-bacteria interactions. This approach enables the prediction of effective phage cocktails, enhancing the development of CRISPR-enhanced bacteriophage therapies.
PrecisionPhage (Finland): PrecisionPhage has developed “Phagenomics,” a browser-based tool that streamlines phage genome analysis. This platform aids in the rapid assembly and annotation of phage genomes, expediting the discovery of therapeutic phages.

Summary: Despite the competitors in the field, nobody currently has a reliable model for phage therapy (since no company can target the LPS bush accurately yet). Mystiphage, unlike many of these competitors, does not make a single protein. Instead, we are orchestrating a protein system to work by ensuring the phage binds to the bacteria. We don’t want to generate single proteins; we want to design orchestrated protein systems. Hence, our advantage will be in the library of RBPs we create for customers to use.

Does the team have the necessary skills, capabilities, and stakeholder relationships to execute their solution

Core Team Skills and Expansion Plans

Our founding team brings expertise in research development, operations oversight, business strategy, ethics, finance, and scientific translation. However, we have identified critical gaps requiring additional talent in AI and computational biology for proof of concept development, plus wet-lab operations for RBP validation and therapeutic testing. Following seed funding, we plan strategic personnel expansion across four key roles: AI Specialists (2 positions at CAD 70K-90K full-time), Operations Manager/Finance (CAD 60K-80K), Wet-Lab Technicians (4 positions at CAD 45K-60K each), and Marketing Development Lead (CAD 60K-85K). This hiring plan directly addresses our SWOT-identified weakness of limited AI expertise.

Critical Academic and Institutional Partnerships

We have secured strategic mentorships with researchers from Canada’s leading phage research groups - Davidson Lab and Maxwell Lab at the University of Toronto - providing curated datasets, experimental advice, and scientific credibility. University of Toronto’s BioZone facility offers physical lab space, safety infrastructure, and shared equipment access. The Hatchery accelerator provides business mentorship, IP strategy support, and investor connections.

Essential Resource Infrastructure

Our technical infrastructure encompasses comprehensive phage-bacteria interaction datasets sourced from partner laboratories, cloud-based GPU access through AWS for future sponsorship initiatives, BSL-2 wet laboratory facilities (CAD 4,000-7,000/month), and advanced protein modelling platforms including ESM-3 and Boltz-2. We have established a robust intellectual property strategy supported through The Hatchery, with specialized legal counsel engaged to facilitate patent filing processes. Our strategic partnership objectives encompass collaborative initiatives with established biotechnology companies, including IPATH, Eligo Biosciences, and Eliava Institute. These partnerships are designed to accelerate research workflows and facilitate the transition of phage therapy innovations toward pharmaceutical adoption and clinical implementation.

Has the team considered the positive and negative long-term impacts of their fully developed solution?

Our platform addresses antimicrobial resistance projected to cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050. By reducing phage therapy development from six months to hours, we democratize access to personalized treatments and transform phage therapy from a last resort to a frontline defence. Our modular RBP bank creates reusable therapeutic libraries that improve global health equity.

We identified critical challenges, including bacterial evolution and resistance development, making long-term efficacy unpredictable. Regulatory uncertainty surrounding genetically modified phages creates market barriers. Healthcare provider resistance to AI-based approaches may slow adoption. High computational costs ( $5,000-$ 8,000 per therapeutic candidate) could limit accessibility despite democratization goals. Integration challenges into existing clinical workflows require substantial training and infrastructure adaptation. Intellectual property vulnerabilities exist since naturally occurring phages are difficult to patent. Using artificial intelligence to design genetic codes raises definite concerns about affecting evolution and potentially contributing to natural selection pressures. We acknowledge increasing regulatory pressure on AI data collection, utilization, and generation. Identified risks include bacterial resistance evolution, regulatory uncertainty for genetically modified phages, high costs, and clinical integration challenges.

We view artificial intelligence as a neutral tool that can be a public good or be detrimental to the well-being of humanity, depending heavily on the intentions. Given that many industries are transitioning for the better using artificial intelligence and that antibiotic resistance is an imminent danger to humanity, we consider AI-driven therapeutic development an inevitable advancement to save millions of lives.

Business Plan

Developed using the FEEL Methodology™ of Venture Creation, Mystiphage’s comprehensive business plan addresses critical aspects of the start-up creation process. This strategic framework encompasses: problem identification and market analysis, customer segmentation and value proposition development, barrier assessment and go-to-market strategy, timeline optimization, scalable business model architecture, team composition and key resource allocation, strategic partnerships and supplier networks, and implementation timeline.

Pitch Deck

Mystiphage’s comprehensive pitch deck provides a strategic overview of our business model, developed in collaboration with advisors at the NEST Hatchery at the University of Toronto. This presentation synthesizes our core value proposition, market opportunity, and technical approach to phage therapy commercialization.

Our executive summary provides a concise overview of Mystiphage’s value proposition, market opportunity, and competitive advantages, designed to facilitate rapid investor assessment and engagement.

Cashflow Projections

Mystiphage’s comprehensive 2-year financial projections detail operational cash flow requirements, revenue forecasts, and capital allocation strategies for sustainable company growth.

2025 Demo Day Pitch

Mystiphage was selected after many rounds of evaluation from a pool of startups to advance into Demo Week. An initial pool of 20 startups were selected to the NEST Hatchery, where they continuously developed their startups in preparation for Nomination Pitch Day. Following nomination pitches, around half of the startups move onto Demo Week; where they prepare for a final round of pitching in front of the incubator’s board members and investors. Following Demo Day Pitches, the final batch of startups are selected by the NEST Hatchery to continue developing their ideas to become investor-ready in the Go-To-Market stage.

Our Demo Day presentation showcased Mystiphage’s core technology and business model through a focused 6-minute pitch to industry stakeholders. Following a successful evaluation, we advanced to the Go-To-Market stage, positioning Mystiphage for continued development and investor presentations. As of currently, our startup is on its way to becoming investor-ready, and we will continue to work with the NEST Hatchery and the University of Toronto to develop our deliverables. After 6 months, we will then present our business deliverables to an investor board to gauge interest for fundraising.

Advisory Board

NEST Hatchery Board

Our advisory board had a wide range of mentors, all associated with the NEST Hatchery. Many of these mentors dedicated their time and efforts from May to September 2025, supporting the various teams selected for the NEST incubator, in which Mystiphage was a participant. Our advisors from the Hatchery were: Melanie Mah, Charles Boulakia, Raymond Chik, James MacIntosh, Amandeep Thind, and Joseph Orozco.

NEST logo

Most Recent Status

The company has completed UofT’s NEST 2025 incubator program. The company will be present in Paris, France, as part of iGEM Toronto. The company has been selected for the “Go-to-Market” stage of UofT’s incubator, unlocking non-dilutive funding, legal, accounting, and other business development resources.

Employees: 11 (Entrepreneurship Team) As of October 1st, 2025.

Supporting Institutions

NEST Hatchery

The NEST Hatchery has provided comprehensive support and strategic advisory services throughout our business development process, enabling the creation of a robust business plan, revenue model, cash flow projections, and investor pitch presentation.

NEST Hatchery logo

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto has provided essential infrastructure support through laboratory space allocation, faculty advisory services, and institutional guidance for project feasibility assessment and technical development.

UofT logo

University of Toronto Engineering Society (Skule)

The University of Toronto’s Engineering Society (Skule) has provided comprehensive project development support, with particular emphasis on faculty mentorship and specialized assistance for the iGEM Toronto team initiatives.

Skule logo

Current Team

The Mystiphage team comprises dedicated University of Toronto students who specialize in integrating entrepreneurial business development with cutting-edge scientific innovation and biotechnology research.