5 Philadelphia Area Bioscience Companies Fighting Infectious Diseases

Philadelphia is a blossoming biotech cluster across a wide array of fields and market sectors. Cell and gene therapy is a rapidly growing sector; the area has a deep and diversified life sciences talent pool; medtech companies are thriving and are poised for even more growth; and a bevy of Philadelphia bioscience organizations have a focus on battling COVID-19 and preparing for the next infectious disease to threaten public health.

Here is a sampling of Philadelphia-based companies to keep an eye on in the infectious disease space.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Plymouth Meeting, PA

Inovio Pharma, located just outside of Philadelphia, is on a mission to develop DNA medicines to help save lives. The development and commercialization efforts target medicines for infectious diseases, cancer, and HPV-associated diseases. 

Founded in 1999, Inovio is a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ: INO) led by Dr. Jacqueline Shea, who was just recently appointed the company’s President and CEO.  The company has strong partnerships with a host of organizations, including the Center for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the NIH, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to only name a few. Inovio currently employs approximately 300 staff across its Philadelphia headquarters and R&D and Device Engineering & Manufacturing facilities in San Diego, California. 

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The company has a COVID-19 booster and a COVID-19 vaccine in Phase 2 and 3, respectively. Inovio’s pipeline also includes treatments for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS, Phase 2) and Lassa Fever (Phase 1, both products are in partnership with CEPI.) What’s more, the company is developing a booster against the Ebola virus (Phase 2).

Integral Molecular, Philadelphia, PA

Integral Molecular is a research-driven biotechnology company creating innovative technologies and therapeutic antibodies for under-exploited membrane protein targets, including GPCRs, ion channels, transporters, and viral envelopes. The company has helped some 400 companies with their research, drug discovery, and vaccine development efforts. 

Founded in 2001, Integral is led by Founder, President, and CEO Benjamin Doranz, who has led the company since its inception. The company employs approximately 90 team members at its 26,000 square foot R&D facility located at the University City Science Center, the country’s largest urban research park. Integral has deep roots in Philadelphia and is one of the founding members of its growing biotech hub. In fact, Doranz and his current leadership team all met at the University of Pennsylvania and remain committed to the Philadelphia community and workforce development. 

At the heart of Integral’s business are six technology platforms that focus on MPS Antibody Discovery, Lipoparticles, Epitope Mapping, Membrane Proteome Array and Virology. On the Virology front, Integral’s platform enables the discovery of vaccines and antiviral therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2, influenza, dengue, Zika, and other viruses.   

Chimeron Bio, Philadelphia, PA

Chimeron Bio is “…developing a compelling portfolio of innovative and personalized saRNA-based medicines for people with serious diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, and rare genetic disorders.” The company aims to achieve superior responses via lower dose therapies.

The self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) replicon approach is based, according to the company’s website, “…on a type of RNA genome that is unique to certain families of viruses. This highly specialized system lets the virus make multiple copies of its RNA genome, and therefore encoded proteins, from just a single RNA template.” The saRNA replicon approach potentially results in higher RNA copy numbers than mRNA, yielding an effective protein response with lower amounts of saRNA when compared to mRNA methods. 

Chimeron’s nanoparticle platform is named ChaESAR, which stands for Chimera Encased Self Amplifying RNA. This platform harnesses the properties of self-amplifying RNA and synthetic genomics to engineer novel RNA drugs. The company currently has two COVID-19 vaccines in preclinical development and four oncology cell therapies in the preclinical stage 

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Founded in 2015, Chimeron is led by its CEO Dr. Jolly Mazumdar. The company is in its early stages and employs approximately 20 staff. 

Biomeme, Philadelphia, PA

Biomeme is a medical diagnostics company founded in 2012. The company created the first real-time PCR thermocycler that is smartphone-based. Essentially, the company created the first iPhone add-on capable of performing molecular diagnostics. In 2021 Biomeme acquired the private diagnostics company Predigen, which expanded Biomeme’s capabilities into infectious diseases and clinical microbiology.

The company offers end-to-end mobile molecular detection solutions and also owns One Health Laboratories, which specializes in rapid diagnostic testing services throughout the U.S. Biomeme also provided COVID-19 diagnostic testing for educational institutions, the film industry and federal contractors. Biomeme offers a host of products to its customers, including DNA and RNA purification, real-time PCR tests, mobile qPCR thermocyclers, PCR mobile apps, PCR data management services and a Biomeme web API.

The company is led by Co-founder and CEO Max Perelman and employs over 100 team members. Biomeme has seven offices in the U.S. with its headquarters in Philadelphia.

Ocugen, Malvern, PA

Ocugen is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing gene therapies to cure blindness diseases and developing a vaccine to save lives from COVID-19. The company’s modifier gene therapy platform has the potential to treat multiple retinal diseases with one mutation-agnostic drug its novel biologic product candidate aims to offer better therapy to patients with underserved diseases such as wet age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, Retinitis Pigmentosa, Dry Age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

Ocugen currently has a COVID-19 called COVAXIN™ (BBV152) that is in Phase 2/3. The vaccine is a whole-virion inactivated vaccine.

The company is led by industry veteran Dr. Shankar Musunuri, who serves as Ocugen’s Chairman of the Board and CEO; he is also a co-founder of the organization. Approximately 75 staff are part of the Ocugen team that is headquartered just outside of Philadelphia.