If all goes according to plan, healthcare facilities in the next few years could begin purchasing 3D-printed bone implants that are being developed by a Farmington-based startup called A.D.A.M.
The company, which operates out of office and lab space inside UConn’s Technology Incubation Program (TIP), received pre-approval from the Food and Drug Administration in July to begin testing its implants on animals, said CEO Denys Gurak, who is eyeing a 2023 marketplace launch.
“We’ve been trying outreach to some top U.S. insurance companies,” said Gurak, who previously led pharmaceutical manufacturing regulation at the State Administration of Ukraine on Medicinal Products, Ukraine’s equivalent to the FDA. “They will be the primary payer for the treatment we provide, so we want to do this early rather than later.”
The company was formed as a spinoff of another Connecticut startup, Kwambio. A ceramic 3D-printing company based in Groton, Kwambio went through the Stanley+Techstars Accelerator in 2018. At the beginning of 2019 Kwambio, which had a 10-person technical team in Ukraine doing research and development on medical uses for ceramic 3D printing, moved into office space in Groton’s BioCT, a Pfizer-owned incubator for bioscience startups, said Dmitry Skomorohhov, Kwambio’s CEO, and vice president of business development at A.D.A.M.
Skomorohhov is a Ukraine native who initially came to the U.S. by way of a Boston-based business accelerator program, which Kwambio was accepted into in 2015. As the company went through Stanley+Techstars program in Hartford in 2018, its team in Ukraine perfected a mix of materials that, when used in a ceramic 3D printer, result in a porous material that appears to work well for bone implants.
While Kwambio makes and sells ceramic 3D printers, A.D.A.M. fits squarely in the biotech space, where numerous regulatory hurdles exist. So he tapped Gurak, who has experience in working with international regulatory boards in the public and private sector in Ukraine. Last October A.D.A.M. was accepted into UConn’s TIP program.
“The networking and resources at TIP are great,” Skomorohhov said. “UConn is full of very smart people.”
After submitting results from pre-clinical trials using A.D.A.M.’s prototypes on rats, the FDA granted pre-approval to the company’s biopolymer and bioceramic bone implants for further pre-market animal testing.
Since the company was founded in 2018, it raised $500,000 in an initial seed round, Gurak said. It’s currently in the middle of a $5 million fundraising round, and investors have already committed $3 million, Gurak said.
Gurak and Skomorohhov have met with about a dozen insurance companies and healthcare systems in Connecticut seeking partnership, the two said.
Gurak’s ultimate goal is to install A.D.A.M.’s 3D bone printing technology in healthcare facilities, which would pay monthly or annual fees for the service. Initially, though, he thinks the company will print bone implants off-site, and deliver them to hospitals.
Connecticut has proven to be an advantageous location for A.D.A.M., Gurak said. Through connections made by its sister company, Kwambio, the startup has been able to pitch to potential partners and investors.”Connecticut is a good place to do business,” Gurak said. “The whole ecosystem is very developed, you have a lot of talent from universities, and you have a lot of companies you can partner with.”
