Company History
Vaxiion Therapeutics was founded by Professor Emeritus Dr. Roger Sabbadini and his graduate student Neil Berkley at San Diego State University in 2000 and is one of four biotechnology companies to emerge from San Diego State's College of Sciences. Professor Sabbadini has extensive experience as a serial bio-entrepreneur having started Lpath, Inc. (www.lpath.com) in addition to his heavy involvement in the spin-out of both Vaxiion and the recently acquired Mpex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.mpexpharma.com).
Minicells, the underpinning of Vaxiion's technology and asset base, were originally discovered by microbial geneticists studying cell division in Gram-negative bacteria over 40 years ago. Since then, minicells have been used to study other aspects of microbial genetics and physiology as well as phage transduction, protein synthesis, and plasmid biology. After 1990, minicells were seldom reported in the literature outside of the context of plasmid-borne protein synthesis or cell division gene studies. Major advances in molecular biology, microbial genetics, cancer biology, and genomics - along with the efforts of Vaxiion - have resurrected minicells as a viable and highly flexible targeted delivery platform.