Indiana Life Science Company Seeks to Transform Drug Delivery

September 12, 2019

Indianapolis, Ind. — Toralgen, Inc., an Indiana-based biotechnology company, announced the closure of its seed funding round, raising more than $1.9M. Participants in the round include Elevate Ventures, Solyco Advisors, and VisionTech Angels as well as investors and strategic partners with deep domain expertise. Toralgen is a preclinical stage company focused on improving drug delivery and will use the funds to further development of their innovative platform.

“Our unique technology has the potential to not only transform how a variety of drugs are administered, but to improve their pharmacology,” said Gerald Rea, CEO of Toralgen. “Through our team’s discoveries and the support of our investors, we are laying the groundwork for a portfolio of commercially transformative assets. We look forward to fully characterizing our improvements in the delivery of insulin, incretins and immunomodulatory combinations.”

Toralgen is commercializing a nanopill system formed from polymerizing naturally occurring bile acids. This founding technology is the result of over 20 years of cutting-edge nanoparticle research by inventor and Toralgen cofounder, Dr. Tarek Fahmy. Dr. Fahmy is a leader in the field of nanoparticle development and associate professor at Yale University.

“The platform’s first important feature is enabling oral delivery to improve compliance and simplicity for the patient. The second important feature is addressing three major issues with diabetes concurrently—immediate blood glucose control, restoration of pancreatic function and re-normalizing immunity in the pancreatic environment. The potential is enormous for diabetes and other disease states as well. Our goal is to simultaneously address the causes of diabetes in the same easy manner that we treat a headache. I am excited to leverage the platform’s future capabilities into other autoimmune diseases and cancers,” Dr. Fahmy explained.

“We’re thrilled that investors are recognizing the potential in this novel drug delivery platform, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with Toralgen” added Dr. John Puziss, director of business development in Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research.

Toralgen, Inc. was established in 2017 to commercialize a new type of nanopill licensed exclusively from Fahmy Labs at Yale University. The company was founded by Gerald Rea, Tarek Fahmy, Ph.D, associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry & Environmental Engineering, OB/GYN/Reproductive Science, Immunobiology at Yale University; and David Horwitz, M.D., chief of the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology (1980-2007) for Keck School of Medicine.