A former Texas-based diagnostics company has received funding from Southern Research to continue to develop a treatment for Long Covid.
Celestia Diagnostics was one of eight companies that received a combined $2.5 million from Southern Research as part of its Therapeutic Development Fund (TDF). The TDF was established as a result of the Innovate Alabama Tax Credit created in 2023.
The organization focuses on Long Covid, essentially chronic symptoms following the sickness.
“A subsection of people who develop acute Covid go on to develop chronic symptoms,” Founder Mendel Fishman said. “They may fully recover and then within a short period of time, usually a month or two, start developing this symptom pattern, or they may just never fully recover.”
Celestia Diagnostics was awarded $45,000 from the fund to help the organization “access contract research services.”
As a company with laboratories accredited with a BSL-2 laboratories, meaning they can only work with microbes that pose a moderate health risk, Southern Research will help facilitate a BSL-3 laboratory. The increased biosafety level allows the organization to work with serious or potentially deadly microbes through respiratory transmission.
“They’re going to be doing BSL-3 work to help us assess the feasibility of developing one diagnostic for Long Covid,” Fishman said.
Celestia Diagnostics, relocated to Birmingham from Dallas in 2023 and was an initial member of Southern Research’s Station 41 Incubator, a shared office space for tech startups.
“In terms of cost effectiveness, Birmingham has really been amazing, we get a lot more runway here,” Fishman said. “We’re seeing the infrastructure around how some of the large nonprofit institutions interact with those startups be developed.”
Fishman credits South Research for creating accessibility for startups and helping them gain a foothold in the metro.
“As time goes on, we’re going to see that system of public-private partnerships become more seamless,” Fishman said. “Southern Research has really spearheaded making all the infrastructure they’ve built and the expertise they have more accessible to startups.”
“It’s very hard to succeed as a startup when your by yourself, you need the connections, you need culture.”
