aid: cell-design-labs
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/cell-design-labs.png
name: Cell Design Labs
description: 'Cell Design Labs, Inc. was a biotherapeutics company based at 5858 Horton Street, Emeryville,
  California, that engineered immune cells into "smart, living therapies" for cancer and other diseases.
  Its platform was a toolkit of proprietary molecular modules — including synthetic Notch (synNOTCH) receptors
  and programmable, combinatorial-antigen CAR-T circuits developed out of Wendell Lim''s lab at UCSF — deployed
  inside an immune cell to program its specificity and control its killing force, so a therapy recognizes
  a disease signature and neutralizes it without harming adjacent tissue. The company ran an exclusive research
  collaboration with Kite Pharma (announced June 2016) on molecular on/off switches for CAR T-cell immunotherapies,
  and was acquired by Gilead Sciences, announced 7 December 2017. Cell Design Labs no longer operates as
  an independent company: celldesignlabs.com is dead (DNS resolves to a parked address, HTTP times out;
  the archived site shows an expired Squarespace subscription). It published no developer program, API,
  documentation, SDK, or GitHub organization, and none exists to enrich.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cell-design-labs/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- kleiner-perkins
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: no-api-surface
x-status: acquired
x-acquired-by: Gilead Sciences
x-acquired-announced: '2017-12-07'
x-operating: false
x-website-status: dead
x-archived-website: http://web.archive.org/web/20180423192230/http://www.celldesignlabs.com/
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Healthcare
- Biotechnology
- Cell Therapy
- Immunotherapy
- Oncology
- Synthetic Biology
- CAR-T
- Acquired
- Defunct
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1
  notes: 'Company is defunct (acquired by Gilead Sciences, Dec 2017); primary domain celldesignlabs.com
    does not serve HTTP and its www host does not resolve. No developer portal, API, docs, SDK, package,
    .well-known, or GitHub org exists. Probed the live domain plus the Wayback archive; identity fields
    upgraded only.'