Two of Alabama Inno’s Startups to Watch for 2024 are University of Alabama at Birmingham spin-offs: Alveolus Bio and Reliant Glycosciences.
Alabama Inno, which is part of the Birmingham Business Journal (BBJ), created the list of 17 start-ups to showcase Alabama start-ups that have “secured capital, garnered a customer base, nabbed partnerships or simply exhibited innovative ideas – indicators that they are one to watch,” according to a BBJ story.
Alveolus Bio, founded by C. Vivek Lal, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, is a drug development company creating FDA-approved inhaled therapeutics for chronic lung diseases.
The story noted that Alveolus Bio was a spinout from Lal’s Pulmonary Microbiome Lab.
The company’s lead program, AB1000, is focused on treating patients who deal with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in stages 3 and 4 of severity, as defined by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). Those who deal with GOLD stages 3 and 4 likely deal with severely limited airflow in and out of the lungs, difficulty breathing, low lung function and potential frequent flare-ups or hospitalizations.
For its work on AB1000, Alveolus Bio received a $2.5 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) FastTrack grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The company is one of only a few Alabama-based companies ever to have received a FastTrack award from the NIH.
Reliant Glycosciences, a biotechnology company that focuses on developing diagnostic and prognostic tools for patients with IgA nephropathy, was founded by a group of UAB professors, including Matthew Renfrow, Ph.D., William Placzek, Ph.D., Dana Rizk, M.D., Bruce Julian, M.D., and Jan Novak, Ph.D.
The BBJ story noted that Reliant has “begun the transition from providing its assays as a contract research organization service to customers to developing prototype assay kits that will go into production as its first launched product. These kits will be for research use only, but that will only be the beginning.”
To see the other Alabama Inno Start-ups to Watch, visit the Birmingham Business Journal.