Cell Design Labs

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.

Cell Design Labs is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Healthcare, Biotechnology, Cell Therapy, and Immunotherapy.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

5.7/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyHealthcareBiotechnologyCell TherapyImmunotherapyOncologySynthetic BiologyCAR-TAcquiredDefunct

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 5.7/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

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Source (apis.yml)

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.