It was 2019 when Eric DeJesus began pursuing his private pilot’s certificate. Driven by a desire to learn new things, he found a new obsession above the clouds. When the school closed not long after due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he pivoted and became a certified firefighter and paramedic to help his community during a challenging time.
It’s evidence of a trait central to DeJesus: natural curiosity and a desire to make an impact.
That curiosity took shape in his youth. Once, while serving tables at a restaurant, he met a physician who later became a mentor, introducing him to colleagues and allowing him to shadow clinical staff at the hospital.
He saw himself becoming a physician at the time, but after three years shadowing surgeons and working in research labs as an undergraduate student, he was captivated instead by the science behind the application and development of treatments themselves. Around that time, his grandmother had been diagnosed with lung cancer, passing away just six months later. The toll it took on his family helped illuminate his path.
“It was less about diagnosing cancer,” said DeJesus, currently adjunct faculty in the and a biochemist and molecular cell biologist at the United States Department of Agriculture. “That’s a huge field. I just wanted to be part of the team that asks, once you have cancer, what are we going to do?”
It’s a question that has driven DeJesus ever since. He arrived at the Դɼ in 2009 to obtain his Ph.D. and work in a cancer therapeutics lab. The world, however, had other plans.
After joining a cancer-focused lab at , the funding that supported his position fell through in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. With little time to spare, DeJesus was desperate to find any lab to work in. He met Stephen Hajduk, then-department head of biochemistry in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Hajduk told DeJesus about his lab’s work on a deadly parasite—and an innate defense mechanism humans use against it. It’s a protein that, while lethal to the parasite, posed no threat to humans.
“Why doesn’t it kill us?” he asked Hajduk after a brief pause.
More importantly, could that lethal mechanism be redirected to solve another problem—one that has eluded researchers for years?
Searching for answers
Hajduk didn’t have an answer at the time. He is, after all, a parasitologist—focused on the parasite—not an oncologist. But DeJesus saw something else: the building blocks of a drug that could potentially direct the same destructive power against cancer cells that it does to the parasite. DeJesus joined Hajduk’s lab for the remainder of his Ph.D., while also continuing to explore those questions.
By 2012, as DeJesus was publishing work on the topic, Hajduk and his wife, Ann, were thrust into an unknown world themselves. Ann had been experiencing unexplainable pain, discomfort, and fatigue, and neither she nor Stephen were entirely sure what to make of it.
“None of us are prepared for getting old, and we don’t know exactly how we’re supposed to feel,” Hajduk said. “Should we feel tired all the time? Should we hurt?”
These early symptoms are often difficult to diagnose. After several years of doctor visits and tests, they visited an oncologist. The oncologist ordered a bone marrow biopsy due to her bone pain and the micro fractures he observed in her X-rays.
A blood test confirmed the worst. Ann was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a deadly blood cancer that forms in bone marrow plasma cells.
“Our oncologist … said, ‘Well, you have multiple myeloma, but we’re going to treat you and we’re going to cure you,’” Hajduk recalled. “We walked out of that meeting, and the only words we heard were ‘and we’re going to cure you.’ We found out that David [Lloyd] was a good oncologist. Not a particularly good liar, but he did the right thing.
“In his mind it was important that she had hope. And that’s what he gave her.”
For the next several years, they tried various treatments, hoping the next would lead to a cure.
Ann endured a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy treatments at the . While waiting to be treated, patients periodically heard a ship’s bell in the building, signaling the completion of someone’s final round of treatment.
“It didn’t take [Ann] long to realize that she would never ring the damn bell,” Hajduk said.
Ann died in 2019 after a seven-year battle with cancer.
Moving forward
Caring for Ann brought Hajduk’s collaboration with DeJesus to a temporary halt.
“It’s not a season of life where you say, ‘Okay, now we’re going to work on this new cancer therapeutic idea while your spouse is in New York, D.C., and Atlanta trying to get treated,” DeJesus said. “I intentionally stayed local. I found a postdoctoral position nearby and just truly hoped that one day we would be able to pick this back up.”
A chance encounter in January 2020 brought DeJesus and Hajduk back together at a local store. The pair exchanged hugs and condolences.
“You ever think about that project?” Hajduk asked.
“Every day for the past five years,” DeJesus said. “And I’ve talked about it to anyone that will stand still long enough.”
The next day they found themselves back in the lab, now accompanied by Michael Cipriano, a longtime colleague of Hajduk and a postdoctoral researcher in his lab at UGA. With a counter full of food and a mountain of old lab data to comb through, the team began the arduous process of breathing life back into the research.
They had already established from Hajduk’s past research how humans defend against trypanosomes, parasites that can cause the fatal human African sleeping sickness. A special type of “good” cholesterol, known as trypanosome lytic factor (TLF), contains a protein, Apolipoprotein L-1 (APOL1), that sticks to the parasite and kills it.
The primary challenge, however, was in the delivery method of the protein. They had a protein that could kill cancer cells in the bloodstream, but no reliable way to send it to the right target.
“Around that time, bispecific antibodies were starting to show real momentum—especially in the context of redirecting T-cells and progress being made in multiple myeloma,” Cipriano said.
Bispecific antibodies are engineered antibodies that can bind to two different targets at once. They were already being used to guide immune cells directly to cancer cells—so why not use them to bind the cancer-killing protein and the cancer cell it was targeting?
They had their delivery system.
“Those developments, plus our core problem—delivery and specificity—converged with what we already had and made the bispecific approach feel like the obvious solution,” Cipriano said.
By engineering this bispecific antibody, naturally occurring good cholesterol that carry APOL1 is attracted to one end of the antibody, while the other end is seeking out the protein receptor of the cancer cell. Once both have been attached, the HDLs work to destroy the cancer cell from the inside.
With a new way forward and an idea of how to progress the research, the team met every week to replicate results from DeJesus’ initial experiments. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they secured small but impactful grants that sustained them while preparing to apply for a federal Small Business Innovation Դɼ (SBIR) grant.
The Year of Pitching Annate
There was just one small hurdle to clear before applying: What would they call the company?
They wanted to honor Ann while reflecting on the technology’s core component of harnessing APOL1 in the human innate immune system. The two ideas came together in the name “Annate.”
With the help of Innovation Gateway, UGA’s technology commercialization and startup support arm, the company was fully formed and the intellectual property secured.
Smaller grants funded early experiments. Collaborations with clinicians and researchers at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute showed the work could be expanded beyond multiple myeloma, a liquid tumor, into solid tumors such as pancreatic cancer.
Each round of data and every expert encountered reinforced the same message: The approach was novel, untested, and potentially transformative.
By 2024, the company was sustaining itself on grants that were becoming more competitive as the economy and private investment attempted to bounce back from the pandemic.
“That’s the world that startups are in,” DeJesus said. “We’re still driven by the technology and getting more data but it’s time to start figuring out what it’s like to go pitch and raise money from venture capital because grants are going to take too long.”
“That’s the world that startups are in. We’re still driven by the technology and getting more data but it’s time to start figuring out what it’s like to go pitch and raise money from venture capital because grants are going to take too long.”
– Eric DeJesus, cofounder and CEO of Annate Bitherapeutics
2025 became The Year of Pitching Annate.
“Our first pitch practice was here in the Delta Innovation Hub,” DeJesus said. “We learned several things and applied for a larger event in April of 2025. That was going to be our first event.”
It was the first-ever Southeast Venture Showcase, a premier pitch competition where innovators presented their most promising technologies to venture capital firms from across the nation.
The Annate team spent several months leading up to the event paring their story down to an investor-ready pitch.
“We’re academics at heart,” admitted DeJesus with a small chuckle. “We tell stories very differently than pitching to a business. Instead of 75% of the slides being data, you get one slide of data.”
Through guidance and mentorship from the Innovation Gateway Startups team, Annate was able to hone their pitch.
Today, Annate operates with patience and realism. The team members have learned much from putting themselves out there throughout 2025. They won several pitch competitions and built on the feedback they received.
“We got better at being resilient, communicating the problem clearly, and being patient in understanding that this is not a fast process,” DeJesus reflected. “It’s going to take time.”
DeJesus likened the dynamic among the three founders to a person holding a helium balloon. He sees himself as the balloon, full of energy and pulling upward, ready to share the story with anyone and everyone. Hajduk is the steady hand on the string, helping to keep the balloon grounded with perspective and methodical thinking. Cipriano serves as the tether between the two, the conduit of vison and execution.
“I don’t know what 2026 has in store for us,” DeJesus said. “I’m still writing grants. I’m still pitching. I’m still sending emails.”
It’s a struggle, though. The team must fit in working on Annate while still having day jobs and other responsibilities. This means many nights and weekends are sacrificed to push the company further and get the necessary funding to start human trials.
“It’s almost irresponsible at this point. If I give up just because I’m tired…”
He trailed off.
“When the data says stop, we will stop.”
Until then, they’ll press on in hopes that everyone, one day, has a chance to ring the damn bell.