When Covid-19 swept through the U.S. in March, everyone everywhere was blindsided.
Businesses and schools shut down with no real indication of when they would reopen. No individual, organization or company was immune, especially not startups.
To stay afloat, many found a way to lean into the growing crisis and pivot in ways that not only helped grow their businesses, but also made an important impact on those around them.
We're diving into five Richmond-area startups whose innovations have paved the way for a safer, new normal.
Kamana Health
Health tech startup Kamana Health has been using its platform to connect health care workers to medical facilities hardest hit by the pandemic.
The Richmond-based company was founded as a software platform that connects traveling nurses and other work-seeking health professionals with healthcare providers, while managing screening, staffing and on-boarding processes.
Co-founder Dave Dworschak said since March, demand for the Kamana's services has skyrocketed. The company partnered with job matching service Nomadicare and immediately began focusing on facilitating staffing in cities with a critical need for healthcare workers.
In particular, Dworschak said Kamana has tried to place workers who were laid off or furloughed because of Covid.
"We brought our minds together and launched a couple of partnerships that helped with the connection piece," he said. "Over the last few months, we were able to bridge more than 1,000 [health care worker to hospital] connections."
Most recently, Kamana has been working to get its technology directly into the hands of health care staffing agencies and facilities.
"What the pandemic has revealed for these staffing firms and hospitals is, the old way of doing things isn’t working," he said. "They’ve realized their bottlenecks and are getting on board with platforms like Kamana. We’re working with them to try to make things more efficient in the future."
Phlow Corp.
In May, Richmond pharmaceutical manufacturing company Phlow Corp. received a $354 million federal contract to make the active ingredients for more than a dozen medicines used to treat patients with Covid-19.
The company, co-founded earlier this year by Frank Grupton and Eric Edwards, operates on the basis of manufacturing high-quality, essential generic drugs at a low cost, helping to boost the United States’ drug reserve.
Robby Demeria, Phlow chief of staff, said the company has contributed to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile more than two million doses of five essential generic medicines used to treat Covid patients.
Demeria said Phlow is able to manufacture chemical precursor ingredients, active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished dosage forms for dozens of essential medicines thanks to partnerships with Civica RX, Virginia Commonwealth University's Medicines for All Institute and AMPAC Fine Chemicals.
He said these are drugs that are in short supply and were previously imported into the states.
"Many of the medicines currently being manufactured are used to treat hospitalized patients with Covid-19," he said. "Phlow is developing and operationalizing the [country's] first Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve... The medicines we're making at Phlow today are essential for saving American lives tomorrow."
Cupron
Richmond-based Cupron has ramped up the use of its copper-infused technology as Covid-19 shows no signs of slowing.
Cupron is a commercial company focused on putting copper compounds into a variety of materials, making them highly anti-microbial, odor-preventing and supportive of the skin.
“Many people see that the benefits on the medical side have application in commercial products and industrial environments as well,” CEO Chris Andrews told Inno. “We had specifically focused on healthcare for several years because we viewed that as the best use of the technology, but with Covid-19 we’re starting to see a much broader interest in the understanding of the role of environmental surfaces in transmitting pathogens.”
Cupron’s flagship product was a line of self-sanitizing linens for use in hospitals, such as in bed sheets, pillowcases, towels or gowns and scrubs. The pandemic forced a shift, however, as the team saw an increased interest from other, non-medical entities looking for ways to incorporate the technology in industries like airframe manufacturing, mass transit, automobile production and consumer products and packaging.
The company recently released its first publicly available consumer product: a face mask made with the copper-based technology.
“One of my most satisfying six or seven weeks... was watching the team here take an idea of this face mask, driven by our customers, and get them made,” Andrews said.
ReAlta Life Sciences
ReAlta Life Sciences, a clinical-stage bio tech company in Norfolk, is looking for ways to help people diagnosed with Covid heal.
The company announced late last month that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had accepted its application for an investigational new drug called RLS-0071 that would treat acute lung injury caused by Covid-19.
“The impact of Covid-19 on patients can be extreme, including life-threatening pulmonary conditions, including acute lung injury,” Ulrich Thienel, ReAlta CEO, said in a news release. “Our goal is to harness the power of the immune system to treat a range of underserved conditions."
In May, Thienel told Inno that ReAlta also raised a $14 million Series A round of funding to help explore therapeutical potential of the drug, as well as assist in its transition to a clinical-stage organization.
Grenova
Grenova has doubled in size since last year, a move that was critical for the company amid Covid-19.
The startup manufactures technology that washes and sterilizes pipette tips used by labs to perform critical testing, a process founder Ali Safavi said is vital, especially during the pandemic, as testing has forced a shortage of lab supplies.
"These critically important plastic tips are, unfortunately, often used once and then tossed into the biohazard bin," he said. "This practice impacts our environment, a lab's bottom line and the resources labs need to fight Covid-19."
Safavi said Grenova has been able to scale up to meet the demand by using its green technology that allows for the washing, sterilizing and reusing of those pipette tips in large quantities.
Since launching in 2014, Safavi said more than 100 million pipette tips have been washed and reused via Grenova products.
"Labs implementing a sustainable plan... are controlling their most important inventory and maximizing their spending on consumables that allow for the increased ability to run Covid-19 tests," he said.