Strand Therapeutics founders Jake Becraft (left) and Tasuku Kitada Jon Chomitz

As a grad student in biological engineering at MIT, Jake Becraft had an idea that could change the way we treat cancer: What if genes could be turned on and off like light switches? Thinking it through a bit further, he envisioned “circuits” in which messenger RNA (mRNA), which carries the instructions for making proteins to cells, could be programmed to cause cancerous tumors to reveal themselves to the body’s immune system.

It was an idea at the cutting-edge of science, and when Becraft cofounded Cambridge, Mass.-based Strand Therapeutics to pursue it there was no guarantee of success. Now, eight years later, Strand seems on the cusp of it. Strand’s preliminary phase 1 clinical trial showed that its fir

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