At Oncoxome, the patent strategy is the seed strategy.

Oncoxome is an exosome therapeutics platform. Exosomes are the small extracellular vesicles cells use to communicate with each other. Oncoxome uses them to deliver messages to cancer cells, with high organ affinity and low toxicity. COO Auriane Gamelin, who came to biotech from operations at Disney, Snapchat, and Warner Bros., calls the technology a gold mine. CEA Dr. Erick Gamelin (MD, PhD) spent thirty-five years as a medical oncologist, including as a medical director at Pfizer and Amgen, and as a former professor of medical oncology in France. They're now ready to raise a seed. And the patent strategy is gating the round.

The investor test.

"Biotech investors are keen to invest in companies that have their own IP and have protected their own IP," Auriane says. A seed investor looking at an exosome platform in 2026 is not writing a check against a slide deck. They are writing it against filed provisional and non-provisional applications.

Oncoxome is generating a portfolio of patents covering different aspects of the platform. The traditional path for filing any one of them runs through outside IP counsel: hand over the slide decks where the science lives, sit through intake meetings walking attorneys through every figure, wait for a draft, review, revise. The translation step alone — slide decks to something an attorney can actually draft from — is weeks of billable lawyer time before a single claim is written. For a single patent, that's expensive. For a portfolio of patents at seed stage, it's a timeline incompatible with closing the round.

"I had no idea how we were going to present our data to a patent lawyer without sitting next to them and walking through every slide. When I saw the tool, I thought — this could be exceptionally valuable. This is how we get it written."

— Auriane Gamelin, COO, Oncoxome

Both founders came in skeptical. Auriane's skepticism was categorical: "If there was one specialty that I thought AI could not replace in law, it was patents. Because I thought patents were way too complex." Erick's prior, after six years in Big Pharma, was the same in substance: patent drafting is a specialized craft, and the existing AI tools he'd seen produced confident-looking drafts that fell apart under technical scrutiny.

Auriane was convinced when she saw Fearn turn Oncoxome's data into a draft patent. Erick was convinced later, and differently. He was convinced when Fearn told him he was wrong.

Arguing with the draft.

Erick was reviewing a draft when he hit a component of the formulation where Fearn had written the claim broadly—at the level of the genus rather than the specific source Oncoxome actually uses. Can we narrow this to what we actually work with?

Fearn pushed back. No—the right strategy was to keep the language broad, extending protection across the genus, with the specific source held back as a fallback rather than disclosed in the broadest claim. Broad claims protect more but are easier to invalidate; narrow claims survive but protect less. The right portfolio uses both, laddered together, broadest at the top with fallback positions underneath, so an examiner who rejects the top claim still leaves protection in place. Most AI tools fold the moment a user with credentials pushes. They re-write to match whatever the user just said, regardless of whether the user is right.

"I'm a scientist. I'm not a patent lawyer. When I talk to the AI, I'm not trying to convince it. I give my opinion. I have questions. It answers me, and tells me why. For me, this is critical — it's not just about getting a patent. It's about understanding, making progress."

— Dr. Erick Gamelin, CEA, Oncoxome

The portfolio.

Oncoxome has now drafted several patents with Fearn, with more in progress. The portfolio will go to outside IP counsel as a set—applications in a form attorneys can review and file, rather than a pile of PowerPoints requiring weeks of intake and costly draftsmanship.

This is the unlock at seed. The traditional cost structure of biotech patent prosecution forces founders to choose which invention to protect first and leave the rest exposed. Oncoxome's investors will see a multi-patent portfolio under review rather than one or two applications and a list of plans. And the strategy behind that portfolio—what to file, in what order, with what scope — has been sharpened in the founders' own thinking rather than handed off.

"It's not only for the patent lawyers. It's for us — to have an idea of what to patent, and the strategy of how."

— Auriane Gamelin, COO, Oncoxome

If you're a biotech founder raising and your IP position is gating the round, try Fearn at fearn.ai.