Serial Entrepreneur and “Frankenstein’s” Ex Launches (Another) New Germline Editing Startup

Cathy Tie seems to be good at starting businesses but not so dedicated to maintaining them. CGS, like many others, first heard of her thanks to Caiwei Chen and Antonio Regalado in MIT Technology Review, May 2025, as the partner (perhaps bride) of the notorious Chinese scientist He Jiankui, described in the headline as “China’s Frankenstein.” He prefers “Chinese Darwin.” She ran his Twitter account for a while, contributing such gems as: 

Get in luddite, we’re going gene editing
Good morning bitches. How many embryos have you gene edited today?
I literally went to prison for this shit.

But do not make the mistake of underestimating her.

Tie was born in China in 1996 and the family moved to Canada when she was four. By the time she was 20, she had scored a Thiel Fellowship, worth $200,000, and dropped out of college to co-found Ranomics, which claims to “translate complex biological data into actionable discoveries,” or “Resolve the Genome’s Known Unknowns.” They scored $100,000 from the San Francisco biotech accelerator IndieBio, which rapidly led to incorporating the company and raising $2 million, according to a 2018 CNN Business profile. She moved into telemedicine and data-mining and in 2020 offered a free on-line tool to self-diagnose COVID-19.

According to her May 18, 2025 post on X, she married “the most controversial scientist in the world” one month earlier, only to find that China would not let her in the country and would not let him out of it. “While I’m concerned about my marriage, I am more concerned about what this means for humanity and the future of science.” 

… “I knew this technology would change the world, but it’s bigger than He Jiankui and China. It should be a borderless technology that helps all of humanity reduce suffering. Perhaps it’s my understanding of this vision that made him fall in love, and he named his new company after me: Cathy Medicine.”

On July 23, 2025, she announced that “Jiankui and I will be pursuing separate paths.” She later clarified that they were never legally married.

Even before that, Tie connected with Josie Zayner, a supporter of He Jiankui and a long-standing advocate of DIY gene editing, to launch The Los Angeles Project. The company was featured in the Wired article “Your Next Pet Could Be a Glowing Rabbit.” Tie seems to have got second billing, which may have influenced her to go East.

There she started her next company, one of a handful of startups that went public in 2025 with plans to edit human embryos. It was initially called Manhattan Project; that was of course a historically famous code name for the secret development of nuclear weapons, so the project was rapidly changed to Manhattan Genomics. Tie had a partner in this, Eriona Hysolli, a former postdoc at George Church’s Harvard lab. Hysolli was Head of Biological Sciences at Colossal Biosciences before co-founding Manhattan Genomics. Wired summed the concept up on October 30, 2025:

A New Startup Wants to Edit Human Embryos

Seven years after the first gene-edited babies were revealed, biotech startup Manhattan Genomics is reviving the idea of editing human embryos to make disease-free children.

The press release name-dropped quite remarkably: 

Company taps John R. Quain, Norbert Gleicher, MD, Carol Hanna, Ph.D, Jon Hennebold, Ph.D, and Stephen Turner, Ph.D to its world-class team to advance responsible genomic medicine. 

… Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D said, “I strongly support Manhattan Genomic's mission to correct and prevent transmission of genetic diseases.

Well, that didn’t last long. On March 19, 2026, Tie posted on X:

Today I am launching Origin Genomics (@OriginGenomics), a new entity that will focus entirely on advancing germline gene therapy [sic] research.
[What she is selling would, optimistically, be preventive medicine, not therapy.]

The 2026 press release announcing Origin Genomics, linked in the thread, adds that the launch “follows the constructive conclusion of Manhattan Genomics. Cathy Tie is now launching the next chapter of her work, continuing to advance responsible genomic medicine.” The release further notes that Origin “intends to offer Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT) in the United States for patients affected by mitochondrial DNA–related diseases, contingent upon the passage of proposed federal or state legislation that would authorize the procedure.” 

In a substantial interview with Endpoints News, published in March 2026, Tie explained that Manhattan had ceased work at the end of 2025. The causes of the breakup are murky, but involved “co-founder conflict.” Hysolli told Endpoints that the breakup was over a Cayman-based entity founded by Tie, who described it as a corporate governance issue. Tie also stated that “my goal is to offer a broad range of germline gene therapies that would also include mitochondria replacement therapy.” She points to “Right to Try” laws passed in several states as the legal strategy for making an end-run around federal prohibitions of both mitochondrial manipulations and heritable genome editing.

Also on March 19, 2026 (what a coincidence!), The Hastings Center for Bioethics issued this press release:

Join Us for The Embryo Frontier: Editing Human Life

Should we use science to edit human life? Gene editing of human embryos could prevent serious genetic disease and improve quality of life in unprecedented ways. But it also raises major ethical concerns. Join us online for a lively debate with Cathy Tie, CEO and Founder of Origin Genomics, and I. Glenn Cohen of Harvard, moderated by Vardit Ravitsky. April 23, 6–7:15 pm.

Is The Hastings Center normalizing embryo editing, and Tie herself, by providing their platform and credibility? Tie certainly sees it that way, crowing to Endpoints that she’ll be “doing a debate with the Deputy Dean of Harvard Law School, Glenn Cohen. Typically, in an early-stage startup, you don’t do stuff like that.” 

Her pursuit of embryo editing for profit poses serious risks; why encourage anyone to take her musings seriously?