Piret Arukuusk is Co-Founder at Vectiopep, a biotechnology company developing peptide-based mRNA delivery technology for cancer immunotherapy. She is a research fellow in peptide chemistry at the University of Tartu with over 1,220 citations.

Piret has more than 15 years of experience developing peptide-based drug carriers and nucleic acid delivery systems at the University of Tartu Institute of Technology. Her research expertise includes cell-penetrating peptides and has been published in leading pharmaceutical journals.

In 2023, Piret won first place at the Startup Day Deep Tech Pitch Match alongside her co-founder. The company participated in the Sparkup incubation program and received an experimental development grant from the University of Tartu in 2022.

Vectiopep raised 450,000 euros in 2024 from angel investors led by Ivo Remmelg and Dag Nurm, with participation from UniTartu Ventures. The company is advancing its technology toward clinical trials to validate safe use in humans.

Vectiopep's proprietary technology delivers mRNA selectively to immune cells with over 99% targeting to lymphoid tissues, compared to less than 3% for industry standard lipid nanoparticles. The platform has potential applications across multiple cancer immunotherapy approaches.