Cathy Tie left university to found her first biotechnology company at the age of 18. In the 11 years since, she has launched several more. Her first company helped genetic-testing firms to interpret their results; her second provides digital health-care services. Her latest venture, which announced some of its first key hires on 30 October, veers out of the mainstream. Tie, who has called herself Biotech Barbie, sometimes refers to her latest company as the Manhattan Project ' the name used for the US effort to develop an atomic bomb in the 1940s ' and now focuses her entrepreneurial ambitions on a controversial goal: altering the genome of human embryos to prevent genetic disorders. Plenty of scientists, however, are worried. Manhattan Genomics, the official name of her latest company, based in New York City was launched this summer. Tie co-founded the firm with Eriona Hysolli, former head of biological sciences at Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas, Texas firm focused on de-extincting...
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