Cathy Tie

Cathy Tie was born in China; Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society writes that she was born in 1996. She moved from China to Toronto, Canada, with her parents when she was four. She had a deep interest in biology and chemistry from an early age, and CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s 2018 profile calls her a gifted child; she did research on her own outside school and said: “Doing research on my own outside of school became part of my identity.”⁠[1][2][3]

She recalled in 2022 that she had loved science, especially biology and chemistry, and building things with her hands since early childhood, and that her high-school science classes relied heavily on memorizing textbooks, which left her unsatisfied.⁠[4]

She has said that her parents were strict and expected her to follow a conventional path, and that her later decision to leave school to start a company went against that expectation.⁠[5]

She recalled that from her sophomore year of high school she contacted university science professors, calling them at the start of each school year for two straight years in the hope of working in a laboratory, and being rejected by all of them; eventually a professor in the University of Toronto’s immunology department agreed to take her on, at 15, for eight months. At 16, her research was published in the Canadian Young Scientists Journal and Genome Research.⁠[3][5]

She recalled in January 2015 that she had been doing science fairs and research since she was 14 or 15; her grade 11 project, on B cells, was carried out in the University of Toronto’s Department of Immunology and led to a published paper. She said: “I've always been really into bio research — whether it's biotechnology, or biochem, or immunology.”⁠[6]

She recalled in 2022 that from her freshman year of high school she cold-emailed University of Toronto professors asking for lab time, and that by 16 she had published her first peer-reviewed paper, in immunology; the experience led her to conclude that academic grants would limit her research and that entrepreneurship offered more freedom.⁠[4]

She graduated from high school in 2014 and enrolled at the University of Toronto to study bioinformatics, staying less than a year before dropping out to focus on her company. The Varsity in January 2015 described her as a first-year life sciences student, and U of T Magazine in February 2015 as a bioinformatics student.⁠[3][6][7]

While at university she worked in Frederick Roth’s laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital on rare genetic variants of disease genes; she recalled that after high school she studied in the university’s molecular genetics department, working on rare genetic mutations. She said in January 2015 that she had attended SynBioBeta’s conference in San Francisco two months earlier.⁠[6][5]

In January 2015, Ranomics, which she had started after putting together a business plan with Leo Wan, a PhD candidate in the same building, was legally incorporated. The company set out to build a database of the effects of rare genetic variants of disease genes for personal genome sequencing. She said: “Ultimately, we are making a database of the effects of rare genetic variants of disease genes,” and explained that she chose a business model because “a business model is a tool for scalability and [reaching] the public.”⁠[6]

Ranomics was accepted into IndieBio, a biotechnology accelerator whose parent is the venture firm SOSventures. The package totalled $100,000: $50,000 in exchange for 8% of the company’s equity and $50,000 for laboratory equipment and indirect costs; the 100-day program was to begin in February in San Francisco.⁠[6][7]

The company’s name combines “rare” and “genomics.” She recalled in 2022 that she had met Leo Wan through a startup competition, and that after Ranomics was accepted into IndieBio she dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco.⁠[3][4]

U of T Magazine profiled the company on February 25, 2015: she was chief executive and Leo Wan chief scientific officer; the company modelled amino acid substitutions and predicted the resulting phenotypic changes, its preliminary research had been done in Fritz Roth’s laboratory, possible applications included hereditary cancers and heart disease, and neurological disorders might be the first focus. The long-term goal she described was to sequence a customer’s genome and provide “a detailed risk report based on their specific amino acid variants.”⁠[7]

She recalled that after the IndieBio program ended she moved back to Toronto to set up Ranomics there.⁠[5]

On June 5, 2015, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2015 class of Thiel Fellows, 20 people chosen from a record 2,800 applications, and she was among them. The announcement gives her as 18 at application and from Toronto, Ontario, working in genomic sequencing, as co-founder and CEO of Ranomics, a biotech startup working to improve the accuracy of genetic testing by determining the consequences of all variants in hereditary disease genes before they are seen in patients.⁠[8]

The same day, BetaKit listed the four young Canadian entrepreneurs selected that year, and she was among them.⁠[9][10]

The program, created by Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, paid $100,000 over two years directly to her rather than to her company and provided mentorship; taking part required leaving school. She recalled that she had been invited to apply and said of the choice: “It was not an easy decision,” and “It took more bravery than it did intellect.” MIT Technology Review wrote in 2025 that the $100,000 grant let her drop out of the University of Toronto and start Ranomics. Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society wrote in 2026 that by the age of 20 she had won a Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry worth $200,000.⁠[11][5][4][1][2]

On September 2, 2016, Toronto-based Ranomics announced a seed round of C$1.6 million (about US$1.2 million), without naming its investors. The company studied variants of unknown significance (VUS), generating and testing genetic variants in cell lines or disease models so that clinical laboratories could classify unknown variants and assess hereditary disease risk; she said that “over 60 percent of all genetic tests are inconclusive.”⁠[10]

In April 2016 Ranomics launched RING-Domain, a database of functional studies of 2,000 BRCA1 mutations; its customers included Mount Sinai Hospital, the Beijing Genomics Institute and Veritas Genetics. The new money was for research and development and for expansion into hereditary cancer genes such as TP53 and BRCA2. The company was then based at JLABS, a health incubator run by Johnson & JohnsonJohnson & JohnsonJohnson & Johnson is an American healthcare company founded in 1886, headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker JNJ.Open the full entry in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District.⁠[10]

She wrote in Canadian Business that she stepped down as chief executive of Ranomics in 2017. CNN wrote in 2018 that when she joined Cervin Ventures she turned over the chief executive role to Leo Wan and remained on Ranomics’ board; that Ranomics had raised more than $2 million since its incorporation in 2015; that its clients included the Beijing Genomics Institute, Veritas Genetics and Advanced Molecular Diagnostics, a division of Mount Sinai Hospital; and that it had launched VariantFind, a DNA library business for synthetic biology and protein engineering customers. She recalled in 2022 that she had been chief executive for the company’s first three years.⁠[5][3][4]

She recalled that Ranomics’ services included the analysis of genetic tests and libraries of gene mutations for protein and enzyme engineering.⁠[5]

In January 2018 she became the youngest of the four partners at Cervin Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm based in Palo Alto that typically invests $1 million to $2 million in seed-stage enterprise technology companies. She said she was most excited about investing in blockchain companies that could disrupt traditional industries.⁠[3]

She recalled in 2022 that she became a partner at the fund, which focused on enterprise SaaS, at 21 and left after about a year.⁠[4]

In 2018 she was named to a ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry “30 Under 30” list; the same year CNN published a profile of her (first published on August 6, 2018), when she was 22.⁠[1][3]

Her second company, Locke Bio, is a digital health platform that helps brands launch white-labelled telehealth services, with physician-approved patient intake, telemedicine consultations, e-commerce payment processing, marketing analytics and an integrated pharmacy and provider network; she is its founder and chief executive. Accounts of the founding year differ: Locke Bio’s website gives 2019, she wrote in Canadian Business that she created Locke Bio two years after stepping down as chief executive of Ranomics in 2017, and MIT Technology Review gives 2020; she recalled in 2022 that she was 23 when she founded it.⁠[12][5][1][4]

Locke Bio’s website says that the company began as a group of direct-to-consumer prescription brands in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, Canada and Brazil, and that the founders, finding each new brand manual, costly and difficult to set up, built the current platform. In Canadian Business she wrote that in the preceding year Locke Bio had received funding from investors such as Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe23andMe23andMe is a consumer genetics and research brand offering ancestry and health-risk services. It is now operated by 23andMe Research Institute, a nonprofit based in Palo Alto, California.Open the full entry, 10x Capital and Origins Pharmacy, and said: “Patients are getting as comfortable with prescription delivery as they are with online shopping.”⁠[12][5]

The Center for Genetics and Society wrote in 2026 that she released a free COVID-19 self-diagnosis tool in 2020. An interview introduction on Locke Bio’s website describes her as 25 years old, the founder of several multimillion-dollar health technology companies and formerly the youngest partner at Cervin Ventures.⁠[2][13]

On November 20, 2022, CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry published an interview with her under a headline saying she considers starting a company “an art and creative process”; she was 26 and based in Los Angeles. That year she posted a link to the interview, writing: “Starting companies is my preferred form of art.”⁠[4][1]

In Canadian Business she wrote that she routinely asks of a project “Why are we doing this?”, that she pushed herself to take risks and get past the fear of failure, and that she is grateful to those who mentored her and intends to help future entrepreneurs in turn.⁠[5]

In 2023 she incorporated The Los Angeles Project under her legal name, Cheng Cheng Tie, co-founding it with the biohacker Josie Zayner; the company planned to modify animal embryos, including glow-in-the-dark rabbits as pets and adding horn genes to horse embryos to make a “unicorn.”⁠[1]

She confirmed that she married someone else in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry in July 2024 and that they separated after a few months; she declined to describe the legal status of that marriage.⁠[1]

In February 2025 she and Josie Zayner made The Los Angeles Project public. The company received $1 million from the 1517 Fund, a venture firm that backs dropouts and whose managers previously ran the Thiel Fellowship. Michael Gibson, a partner at the 1517 Fund, wrote in an email that she is “not just exceptional, but profoundly exceptional,” and notes he had written before the fund invested praised her “hyper-fluent competence” and “low need for social approval.” Josie Zayner said: “This is a company that should not exist.”⁠[14][1]

The same month, Culver City-based Locke Bio launched Locke Bio Pay, a payment processing platform that lets direct-to-consumer brands handle pharmaceutical payments under the compliance rules of each state or country, with LegitScript, an internet and payment compliance organization for the health care sector, as partner and Longevity Meds, Riize and Mailbox Meds among its clients. As chief executive she recalled: “At the time, if you were a direct-to-consumer brand, you had to build your own infrastructure from scratch every time.”⁠[15]

On April 15, 2025, the Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced a new venture, Cathy Medicine, aimed at editing human embryos to make people resistant to diseases such as Alzheimer’s or cancer. On April 18 the two announced their marriage on X, posting photographs of themselves in traditional Chinese wedding attire; Sing Tao Headline wrote that in the photographs the bride wore a dragon-and-phoenix gown and held a glass, as did He Jiankui in a suit. She said she had visited China three times in 2025, including a three-week stay in April; MIT Technology Review described the courtship that led to the wedding as a “whirlwind romance.” Core Memory wrote that they married in Beijing in April 2025, when she was 29 and He Jiankui was 41.⁠[1][14][16]

A wedding photograph she posted on Rednote shows a banquet hall with a small number of guests, among them He Jiankui’s criminal defence lawyer, Cai Xilei; Liu Haiyan, an investor and former business partner of his; and Darren Zhu, an artist and Thiel Fellow who is making a “speculative” documentary about He Jiankui. She declined to say whether they were legally married, saying: “I wouldn't marry him if I wasn't in love with him.” Sing Tao Headline wrote that she posted wedding and everyday photographs on Rednote and described her husband as the Jay Chou of science, and that this was He Jiankui’s second marriage.⁠[1][17]

He Jiankui had announced in 2018 the birth of twin girls whose genes he had edited and in 2019 was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 3 million yuan for illegal medical practice; after prison he opened a new laboratory under government monitoring. After the wedding she planned to move from Los Angeles to Beijing to be with him, said she was “helping Dr. He open up the U.S. market,” and intended to return to the United States with him for research. In an email to MIT Technology Review, He Jiankui credited her with the change in the style of his X account: “It's thanks to Cathy Tie.”⁠[17][14][1]

She said that on May 17, 2025, while travelling from Los Angeles to Beijing, she was stopped during a layover in Manila, the Philippines, and informed that she could not board her flight to China; she held a valid 10-year visa, was given no reason, and heard only that she was likely “on a watch list.” MIT Technology Review stated that it could not independently confirm her account. She said she had got rid of her place in Los Angeles and her car and set out with large suitcases and her dog; as she left the plane in Manila, two agents holding a sign with her name took her to a transfer desk, and immigration officers said she could return to the United States or go elsewhere but could not continue to China. She posted on X: “Stranded in Manila with my dog. Went a little too far with this geopolitics thing … long live germline editing.”⁠[1][14]

Sing Tao Headline gives a different account: it writes that on May 8 He Jiankui posted on X that his wife had flown from Los Angeles to Beijing to join him, had waited more than three hours at the airport and had been refused entry to China.⁠[17]

She wrote on X that their plans were in disarray and that the two “may never see each other again,” adding: “While I'm concerned about my marriage, I am more concerned about what this means for humanity and the future of science.” On May 20 He Jiankui wrote on X: “I only want to reunite with my wife @CathyTie, and continue my gene editing research.” His passport is held by the Chinese authorities, so he cannot leave the country. She said the Cathy Medicine project was “out of the window now.”⁠[1]

After she addressed a post on X to “crypto people,” someone quickly created a memecoin called $GENE as a way for the public to support the couple; He Jiankui reposted her appeal and added the $GENE hashtag. On May 20 she said donations were worth almost $2 million and wrote: “I may need to retract my last statement about crypto.”⁠[1]

In July 2025 she announced on X that she and He Jiankui were separating, writing: “Jiankui and I will be pursuing separate paths”; Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society dates the post July 23, and Sing Tao Headline dates it July 24. Sing Tao Headline wrote that in the statement she said that for various scientific and personal reasons the two would go different ways, that her career and personal life were now rooted in North America while He Jiankui would continue contributing to bioscience in China, that she wished him success in his work, and that she asked that he be given privacy and space while he considered his next steps and sought to return to laboratory research, calling this her only public statement on the matter; by then she had moved to New York for work. Pete Shanks wrote that she later clarified that they had never been legally married.⁠[2][17]

In August 2025 a US startup led by her announced plans to bring human germline genome editing “out of the shadows and into the spotlight.” The company was first branded the Manhattan Project and later renamed Manhattan Genomics. Her co-founder, Eriona Hysolli, had trained in George ChurchGeorge ChurchGeorge Church (George M. Church) is an American geneticist, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and lead of synthetic biology at the Wyss Institute; he developed early direct genome sequencing methods and helped initiate the Human Genome Project and the Personal Genome Project.Open the full entry’s laboratory at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry and had headed biological sciences at Colossal Biosciences, where she worked on “resurrection” projects such as a woolly mammoth proxy.⁠[18][2][19]

The company’s FAQ stated: “Our sole mission is to prevent and ultimately eradicate devastating inherited diseases,” with work “exclusively on health and medical applications”; it said an early embryo “is not a fetus or a developing baby in a womb,” argued that a moratorium “would be counterproductive.” The company also called for revisiting the Dickey-Wicker and Aderholt amendments, the US legal provisions that restrict heritable genome editing and federally funded embryo research. The company said it would not pursue trait modification. Undark wrote that the company’s website said it would prevent “thousands of diseases,” including Alzheimer’s and cystic fibrosis.⁠[18][19][20]

Paul Knoepfler quoted on his blog her words on NPR: “Manhattan Project will explore how to do gene correction in human embryos more safely.” On September 3, 2025, Ashlee Vance’s Core Memory podcast released an interview with her titled “She's Ready To Gene Edit Babies”; the episode notes say she was back in the United States, had just started the Manhattan Project and had been banned from China.⁠[19][21]

On October 30, 2025, Manhattan Genomics issued a press release in New York stating that it had been founded by her and Eriona Hysolli to prevent severe inherited conditions such as Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia through gene correction at the embryonic stage under strict US regulatory oversight, and naming new team members: John R. Quain, an ethics fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Norbert Gleicher of New York’s Center for Human Reproduction; Carol Hanna and Jon Hennebold of the Oregon National Primate Research Center; and Stephen Turner, former head of genomics strategy at Colossal Biosciences. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the inventor of mitochondrial replacement therapy, said he supported the company’s mission. She called it “our generation's Manhattan Project,” with the goal “To ensure no child inherits a preventable genetic disease.”⁠[22]

On November 3, 2025, Nature published a feature by Heidi Ledford whose headline calls her “Biotech Barbie” and asks whether scientists agree with her that the time has come to consider CRISPR babies. The article states that she left university to found her first biotechnology company at 18 and has launched several more in the 11 years since; the first helped genetic-testing firms interpret their results and the second provides digital health care services. On November 6 Nature issued a correction noting that an earlier version had called Manhattan Genomics’ new consultants employees and misstated when their names were announced.⁠[23]

Accounts of when and why Manhattan Genomics stopped differ. Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society wrote that she said in an Endpoints News interview that the company ceased work at the end of 2025, and that the causes were murky but involved “co-founder conflict”; Eriona Hysolli said in Endpoints News that the break was over a Cayman-based entity founded by Tie, while Tie called it a corporate governance issue. Undark wrote in April 2026 that she had posted on X that the company shut down in March because of “co-founder conflict,” and that the company was defunct and its representatives did not respond to interview requests.⁠[2][20]

On March 19, 2026, she announced in New York the launch of Origin Genomics. The press release states that the company operates only in the United States, with research overseen by an independent institutional review board and in compliance with federal and state rules; it aims at high-precision germline correction of well-characterized nuclear DNA mutations to prevent severe inherited diseases, with a research roadmap of improving editing accuracy, reducing mosaicism and rigorous off-target analysis; and it plans to offer mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) for mitochondrial DNA-related diseases in the United States if proposed federal or state legislation authorizing it passes, as it is already permitted in the United Kingdom and Australia. The company describes itself as solely focused on research.⁠[24][2]

Pete Shanks wrote that she points to state “Right to Try” laws as the company’s legal strategy. On March 24, 2026, Endpoints News published a Q&A with her by Ryan Cross that describes her as He Jiankui’s former wife, launching Origin Genomics after Manhattan Genomics shut down, and says she has “an audacity more typical of a tech startup founder than a biotech executive.”⁠[2][25]

On April 23, 2026, as founder of Origin Genomics, she debated Glenn Cohen, deputy dean of Harvard Law School, at an event of The Hastings Center.⁠[26]

On September 30, 2026, she published the paper “No bird soars in a calm: therapeutic germline gene editing” in Trends in Genetics, a Cell Press journal. Origin Genomics’ summary says the paper argues that germline editing technology has changed substantially since the international debate began about a decade ago, with next-generation base editors making precise DNA changes without double-strand breaks; she proposes correcting disease-causing mutations at the embryo stage, starting with severe monogenic diseases, and calls for a scientific and regulatory framework with preclinical research and independent oversight, pointing to the UK’s regulation of mitochondrial replacement therapy as a precedent. She writes that the conversation around germline gene editing “has understandably focused on the risks of intervening” and that it is time to “ask whether there is a responsible path forward for using it to prevent devastating inherited diseases.”⁠[27]

The release describes her as founder and chief executive of Origin Genomics and a member of the board of directors of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Association.⁠[27]

In an August 2025 blog post, Professor Paul Knoepfler argued that making gene-edited babies is “a terrible idea,” that established embryo screening technologies can accomplish almost all of the same potential goals, that the safety of heritable human CRISPR is “largely unresolved at this point,” and that he is “very skeptical” it can be handled well.⁠[19]

In a comment for the Progress Educational Trust’s BioNews, Dusko Ilic, a professor of stem cell science, summarized critics’ views: most inherited diseases can already be avoided through preimplantation genetic testing, which does not alter the germline; some investors who are vocal advocates for enhancement may blur the line between therapy and enhancement, raising concerns about eugenics; and critics warn that this framing risks normalizing premature experimentation, with the consequences carried by future generations.⁠[18]

Boy Vijlbrief, a medical ethicist at Erasmus University Medical Center, said of the “Manhattan Project” name: “that's when the alarm bells start ringing,” spoke of “such an undercurrent there of this perfectionism,” and judged the company’s ethics statement shortsighted and dismissive of important moral arguments.⁠[20]

Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society wrote in March 2026: “Her pursuit of embryo editing for profit poses profound risks; why encourage anyone to take her musings seriously?” He questioned whether The Hastings Center was normalizing embryo editing by giving her a platform, while also writing: “But do not make the mistake of underestimating her.”⁠[2]

The synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel said in May 2025 that “a triangle” was forming among her, He Jiankui and Josie Zayner.⁠[1]

Ranomics: Official website: https://www.ranomics.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

Cervin Ventures: Official website: https://www.cervinventures.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

Locke Bio: Official website: https://www.lockebio.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

Origin Genomics: Official website: https://www.origingenomics.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]

X: Public account: https://x.com/CathyTie (opens in a new window).⁠[31]