Farmington-based immunotherapy startup CaroGen said it has won a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate development of its lead drug candidate, a potential cure for chronically infected hepatitis B patients.
The two-year grant, which comes from NIH’s Small Business Innovation Research program, is the largest of its kind yet for CaroGen, which is developing biotechnology spun out of Yale.
It will be used for process manufacturing, formulation, development of quality control methods, and enabling studies for an Investigational New Drug application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to CEO Bijan Almassian.
CaroGen raised a $2.1 million in 2016, about half of which came from Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public investment arm.
The company is working toward getting its lead drug candidate, CARG-201, into a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Almassian told HBJ recently that the company is also working to raise as much as $25 million in additional funds.
