It’s not easy launching a biotech company.
Adam Utley is ready.
The Immunaeon founder recently became the first entrepreneur to graduate from the University at Buffalo’s Cultivator accelerator program.
He nabbed a $100,000 investment from UB through the program and spent months (with the assist of UB interns and mentors) doing market research on how to commercialize his idea.
“We’re doing all the work to prepare this business to grow rapidly,” Utley said. “This is a business model that works with rapid expansion.”
Through blood draws, Immunaeon stores a person’s healthy immune cells for a future day when they’re needed.
That expertise has value to individuals, especially ones with the genetic disposition to certain illnesses. It also could be a key product for the pharmaceutical industry, where drug development often requires healthy cells.
Utley is in the process of finalizing a partnership with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, which will pair the company with laboratory technicians. He is establishing relationships with partners in the pharmaceutical industry. And he is preparing a marketing campaign that reaches customers directly.
“We offer a new approach to treating certain pre-cancerous patients, and that’s our beachhead market,” Utley said. “We’re working right now on setting up the infrastructure so that we can be successful on a national level.”
Utley has thus far built Immunaeon with the help of contractors, interns and other UB resources, but he is now preparing to bring on new funding and to begin hiring full-time employees.
UB has officially invested into two other Cultivator participants, Arbol and Lemma Labs.
Arbol is a tech-enabled business designed to support low-income college students. Lemma has developed a product, HairID, that measures attributes of a person’s hair such as thickness, damage level and porosity.
UB has earmarked $100,000 for investments in each of those companies when they complete Cultivator, and invested the first $50,000 in each of them.
A total of 19 local companies have now confirmed growth-oriented capital raises this year (the UB financial commitment to Immunaeon was counted on last year’s list). They include Torch Labs ($40 million), Circuit Clinical ($29 million), SparkCharge ($22 million), PostProcess Technologies ($5 million), VeriTX ($4.5 million), HELIXintel ($3 million), ShearShare ($2.3 million), Azuna Fresh ($2.5 million), Patient Pattern ($2 million), BetterMynd ($1 million), Cahill Tech ($375,000), Ellicottville Greens ($300,000), Swift Rails ($255,000) AireXpert ($125,000), Arbol ($110,000), Lemma Labs ($100,000), Timberhut (undisclosed) and Ognomy (undisclosed).
