Immunotherapies. Vaccines. We’ve all had a crash course in these subjects during this year of the pandemic.
Now a Farmington startup is taking immunotherapies and vaccines in new directions in the battle against disease including COVID-19.
Bijan Almassian is president and CEO at CaroGen Corp. His small team five full-time employees and five part-timers occupies space in UConn Health’s Cell and Genome Building on Farmington Avenue. But much of the firm’s research is going on in laboratories spread across several universities.
CaroGen’s lead product is an immunotherapy that targets Hepatitis B, a viral disease that affects the liver and is spread through bodily fluids. While there are Hep B vaccines on the market, the one CaroGen is working on is for treating chronic Hepatitis B, a disease that afflicts 240 million people worldwide.