Buffalo Business First chose 10 companies this year for our inaugural Inno Fire awards, representing the breadth and diversity of Buffalo’s startup scene. These are their stories.
Circuit Clinical
CEO: Irfan Khan
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Seneca One Tower, Buffalo
What the company does: Helps bring clinical trials to doctors' offices around the U.S.
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Dr. Irfan Khan’s dogged pursuit of his startup dream started paying off in earnest on the night of Oct. 31, 2019, when Circuit Clinical won an award in the 43North business competition.
The company raised $7.5 million in early 2021 and then recently announced that it has closed a $29 million round of Series C funding, led by a Denver-based venture capital firm and including contributions from some of the country’s largest life sciences firms.
Circuit Clinical now has more than 70 employees and is actively hiring throughout the organization, with an emphasis on senior leaders that can help it knit together a national network of physicians who can carry out clinical trials.
The core problem Circuit Clinical is trying to solve is that cutting-edge therapies are often only available at onsite academic health centers, making them inaccessible to many. It’s a difficult challenge, requiring buy-in from pharmaceutical companies and medical groups, but Khan says the difficulty level is what makes the work special.
“This is a moment of transformational impact for Circuit,” he told Business First recently. “We’ve worked hard to build a company that will now have a national footprint as it changes how patients can access clinical trials.”
