Tara aims to significantly reduce the costs of drug development.
Columbia University has spun out a new biotech, Tara Biosystems, which is hoping to cut costs of drug development. It has been launched with $302,782 in seed funding by Harris and Harris, a New York venture firm focused on early-stage companies.
Based on research by Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic at Columbia and Milica Radisic at Toronto University, the spin-out’s technology has been dubbed biowire. The technology lets drug developers create an artificial micro-heart with stem cells and mature it to all the tissues found in an adult human heart. This allows researchers to study a drug’s effect on a human heart and prevent possible heart damage in clinical trials.
Harris and Harris’ investment gives the spin-out about one year to prove itself. The spin-out is being incubated within the firm, and led by Misti Ushio, one of the firm’s managing directors. Before joining Harris and Harris in May 2007, Ushio worked in Columbia’s technology transfer office for a year.
The spin-out is yet to figure out its business model.
Misti Ushio, chief executive at Tara Biosystems, said: “People want all the features of the heart in one place, so you can see the interactions and how one thing influences the other. And then you can test new medicines to see how that changes.”
