Hamden bioscience startup CaroGen Corp. said it will open an 800-square-foot laboratory at UConn’s tech incubator in Farmington this month.
CaroGen said the lab space will allow it to collaborate with both UConn and Yale to develop its vaccine technology, which is based on the science of Yale University Prof. John Rose.
The company’s main viral target so far has been hepatitis B, but according to Bijan Almassian, CaroGen’s chairman and CEO, the company will use the lab space to target other diseases as well.
“We can collaborate to go beyond HPV and go to other diseases,” Almassian said in a telephone interview.
In August, Connecticut Innovations awarded $500,000 to CaroGen from the Connecticut Bioscience Fund to advance its vaccine technology. That followed a CI pre-seed investment of $150,000 in 2013 and a grant of $10,000 from CTNext.
The company is hoping to raise between $7 million and $10 million this year to prepare for and complete a Phase I clinical trial and show proof of concept for additional disease targets.
CaroGen is moving into space recently vacated by Jackson Laboratory when its staff relocated to its newly constructed genomic research center on the UConn Health campus, according to Rita Zangari, UConn’s director of innovation programs in the Office of the Vice President of Research.
It’s the largest lab at the Farmington incubator, which also houses ImStem Biotechnology and Avitus Orthopaedics. Two other pending tenants have not yet been announced, Zangari said.
UConn is in the midst of doubling the Farmington incubator space by the end of this year, she said.
