Spin-Off Companies

Alder BioPharmaceuticals

Founded in 2004
This company was founded by Professor Jim Cregg and biotechnology industry veteran Randy Schatzman. Alder BioPharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming the migraine treatment paradigm through the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapeutic antibodies. The company is today pursuing two monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of migraines. With Schatzman as CEO, the company went public on the NASDAQ in May 2014.

Claremont BioSolutions

Founded in 2006
Claremont BioSolutions is a privately held, emerging growth technology company specializing in miniaturized, disposable devices, as well as automated multiplexed instruments, that provide solutions to what is recognized as the “bottleneck” of nucleic acid diagnostics – sample preparation. The company has developed proprietary disposable devices that employ micromotors capable of performing very rapid and efficient mechanical tissue homogenization, cell lysis, and nucleic acid extraction.

ClaremontBio was founded by three KGI faculty — Jim Sterling, Robert Doebler, and Ali Nadim. Sterling remains chairman of its board of directors, and a professor in KGI’s Henry E. Riggs School of Applied Life Sciences.

BioGrammatics

Founded in 2008
BioGrammatics was founded in 2008, and provides products and expert support with and related to heterologous gene expression in a single-cell, eukaryotic microbe, and the yeast Pichia pastoris.  The company was incubated at KGI for a year beginning in November 2008. KGI Professor Emeritus Jim Cregg and Research Professor Ilya Tolstorukov are principals in the company.

Ionian Technologies

Founded in 2000
David Galas’ spin-off company from KGI, Ionian Technologies, was later acquired by Alere and subsequently by Abbott Laboratories. The technology of isothermal amplification was originally conceived in a KGI lab by Professor Galas, and it led to one of the first COVID-19 tests that is currently under Emergency Use Authorization.

Shield Pharma

Founded in 2014
Shield Pharma was formed to commercialize discoveries made in KGI Assistant Professor Mikhail Martchenko Shilman’s lab. The company is developing several drug candidates from the Martchenko lab as possible host-based therapies for deadly bacterial and viral pathogens. The company was co-founded by Martchenko and KGI Professor Joel West, and its Scientific Advisory Board includes Larry Grill, KGI’s Dean of Research, and Stephen Eck, an MD/PhD who is an advisor to KGI’s planned School of Community Medicine.

efyian

Founded in 2017
efyian is an early stage spin-off company commercializing patented innovative technology developed by the founders through NIH funding. The company was founded by KGI faculty members Angelika Niemz and Hsiang-Wei Lu, and efyian’s Advisory Board includes another KGI faculty member, Jim Osborne.

efyian seeks to provide “Point of Care Convenience Central Lab Accuracy” with a compact reusable device whose consumable portions can diagnose several bacterial or viral infectious diseases.

Nanosens Innovations

Founded in 2018
Building on the Cardea Bio graphene biosensor technology platform, Nanosens Innovations Inc. is developing, multiplexing and customizing new applications with our partners to gain insight to interesting biology via the most relevant DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites. Nanosens was co-founded by KGI Assistant Professor Kiana Aran and entrepreneur Michael Heltzen. Aran began development of the technology while employed at UC Berkeley.