About Clara Biotech
About Clara Biotech
Clara Biotech was founded to make medical breakthroughs possible using exosomes. We do this by enabling any lab to easily isolate exosomes from many biofluids with the highest level of speed, precision, and reliability. By solving the most difficult aspects of working with exosomes today, Clara is the first to transform the tedious, time consuming process into one that is repeatedly and automatically accomplished in a manner of minutes.
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Mission
Mission
Create the next generation of biotechnology using exosomes.
Our Story
Our story begins like yours— with an unmet
need for a widely held challenge. In 2012,
Clara’s co-founder, Dr. Mei He, was looking at
biomarkers for cancer when she encountered
time constraints, impurity, inaccuracy, and
unscalability with current exosome research
methods, like ultracentrifugation and size
exclusion methods.
Despite rapid growth in the industry, exosome research was only 10 years old and everyone was suffering from one core problem— purification was terrible.
Despite rapid growth in the industry, exosome research was only 10 years old and everyone was suffering from one core problem— purification was terrible.
Thanks in part to unique developments in chemistry and microfluidics, Dr. He took the first step forward into a new era of exosome isolation and purification, focused on supporting downstream diagnostic processing using exosomes. Her work gained notice, and Dr. He was awarded an SBIR Phase 1 from NCI and a grant to participate in I-CorpsTM at NIH 2018 to begin early market validation.
When bioengineer and innovator, James West, took notice of Dr. He’s work, he immediately saw the potential of exosomes to drive medical breakthroughs and dropped everything to come onboard. Bringing cutting-edge technologies, like exosomes, from the bench to the bedside hit particularly close to home for West. At the time, his brother was battling leukemia. West was experiencing first-hand the strain and complications that accompany the standard of care. Along the way, he couldn’t help but connect the possibilities of exosomes to change the patient journey.
“I saw the possibility of exosomes to help with every stage of the patient journey — From using exosomes to look at the stage of the cancer, to using cancer immunotherapeutic exosomes to treat and train the immune system to fight the cancer directly and to regenerate tissues and organs that have been destroyed. The power of exosomes to drive medical breakthroughs was evident.”
“I saw the possibility of exosomes to help with every stage of the patient journey — From using exosomes to look at the stage of the cancer, to using cancer immunotherapeutic exosomes to treat and train the immune system to fight the cancer directly and to regenerate tissues and organs that have been destroyed. The power of exosomes to drive medical breakthroughs was evident.”
– James West, CEO and Founder of Clara Biotech
After speaking with over 100 people in the industry, it became clear to West and Dr. He that there was a strong unmet need for an easy to use and reliable exosome isolation process. Clara Biotech was founded in July 2018 to build the next generation platform of purification and isolation technology to enable new biotechnology.
Today, we are a team of passionate and determined researchers with 50+ years of combined experience working to bring exosome solutions to the patients who need them most.
Since our founding, Clara has helped numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on multiple continents eliminate the challenges of working with exosomes and focus on driving innovative products to market.
We are determined to open the door for diagnostic and therapeutic advances, like personalized medicine, targeted drug delivery, immunotherapy, orphan & rare diseases, early cancer detection, Alzheimer’s Disease, and virus detection.