Team: Axosim | Origin: Louisiana | Participation: NSF I-Corps Participant 2014
AxoSim empowers advancements in human neuroscience through technologies that provide accurate, predictive models of the human nervous system, rapidly delivering clinically actionable human data early in the drug development process.
AxoSim’s platforms have the potential to reduce the time and cost of new drug research and development for neurodegenerative disorders, in addition to its applications in toxicology. The technology has been shown to achieve research milestones at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional animal testing, allowing AxoSim’s biopharma partners to develop more effective and safer drugs with greater speed and efficiency. In June 2021, the company raised $6.1 million.
AxoSim’s CEO, J. Lowry Curley, puts the impact into perspective: “On average, new drugs require $2.6 B of R&D and 10 years to reach market. Animal testing is the current gold standard, despite the 89% clinical failure rate. AxoSim’s patent-pending Nerve-on-a-Chip(TM) platform predicts human results, addressing a major disconnect between preclinical testing and clinical trial outcomes. Using living human cells in a 3D environment, AxoSim helps pharmaceutical companies develop safer and more effective drugs, developing cures to some of the most devastating neurodegenerative diseases in the world, including Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s, pain, multiple sclerosis, and ALS.”
“I truly feel that I-Corps was fundamental to AxoSim’s early success. We were two scientists with a crazy idea and promising technology who did not really know how the pharmaceutical industry worked. Being forced out of our comfort zone and really learning what our potential customers needed helped us understand the language and landscape to develop our technology in the right direction. Once we were ready, it also helped us sell better, since we actually understood the problem we were solving, rather than just selling a cool technology.” J. Lowry Curley, CEO, AxoSim, Inc.