Tulane University spinout Biophoundry has received a $250,000 investment from Tulane Ventures to advance its engineered phage therapy platform for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.
The company was co-founded by Rani Brooks and Sahan Liyanagedera and is developing technology that could help address infections that no longer respond to conventional antibiotics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year in the United States.
Biophoundry’s platform, Phax, is designed to engineer and produce targeted bacteriophages faster and more affordably than conventional methods. Phage therapy uses viruses that naturally attack bacteria, but traditional phage production often requires growing live bacteria, creating manufacturing, contamination, and timing challenges. Biophoundry’s approach couples computational phage design and selection with rapid phage engineering, supported by exclusively licensed patent families covering cell-free synthesis and the company’s PHAX “engineering-first” approach.
The Tulane Ventures investment, together with angel and other investor funding, will support a healthcare-provider partnership pilot with a regional hospital in the Gulf South and help complete preclinical research needed to file an Investigational New Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
GAP Support and University Commercialization Pathway
Biophoundry is a strong example of a university-originated venture progressing through multiple layers of institutional commercialization support.
Brooks is a former Allan Colowick Innovation Fellow at the Tulane Innovation Institute, a recipient of Tulane’s Provost’s Proof of Concept Fund, and a graduate of Tulane’s Bioinnovation PhD program. His research in cell-free bacteriophage synthesis began with Lisa Morici, a microbiologist and immunologist at Tulane School of Medicine, and Nicholas Sandoval, a synthetic biologist and chemical engineer at Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering. Brooks, Morici, and Sandoval co-authored a 2023 ACS Synthetic Biology paper, “Cell-Free Bacteriophage Synthesis from Engineered Strains Improves Yield.”
Tulane Ventures’ investment represents a downstream step in that commercialization pathway, helping move Biophoundry from university research and proof-of-concept support toward preclinical development, clinical partnerships, and potential FDA review.
“Rani represents exactly what we hope to see from our fellows and PPOC recipients: deep science paired with discipline and know-how to build a company around it,” said Kimberly Gramm, managing director of Tulane Ventures and the David and Marion Mussafer Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer at the Tulane Innovation Institute. “This investment reflects our confidence in Biophoundry’s novel approach and in Rani’s ability to lead it.”
Clinical Need and Market Relevance
Biophoundry is initially engineering phages to target chronic urinary tract infections. Over time, the company hopes to develop custom phages for a broader range of difficult-to-treat infections, including skin infections, catheter-associated UTIs, and severe respiratory infections such as antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.
The clinical need is substantial. Physicians treating patients with multidrug-resistant infections can run out of effective therapeutic options, and traditional phage preparation timelines may be too slow for patients with urgent infections.
“We live in a world of increasing multidrug-resistant infections, and some are outstripping the ability of our armamentarium of antibiotics to treat and cure them,” said Dr. David Mushatt, professor of medicine at Tulane School of Medicine and an infectious disease specialist at LCMC Health. “Phage therapy harnesses viruses that naturally attack and kill bacteria, but the traditional preparation time is measured in weeks to months, time that patients suffering from these infections don’t have.”
Mushatt added that Biophoundry is working to engineer phages in days to precisely target patient-specific bacteria, calling the approach potentially transformative.
Why It Matters for the GAP Ecosystem
Biophoundry illustrates how university commercialization systems can help move a research-based technology across several risk stages:
university research → innovation fellowship → proof-of-concept funding → company formation → university venture investment → clinical pilot and preclinical milestones.
That progression is important because many research-based startups require more than a single award or accelerator experience. Biophoundry’s path reflects a broader GAP model in which fellowships, proof-of-concept capital, commercialization guidance, and university venture investment operate as connected layers rather than isolated programs.
For Tulane, the investment also demonstrates how a university-affiliated venture fund can extend the impact of earlier institutional support. Tulane Ventures is not simply investing in a company after formation; it is helping finance the next milestone for a startup that was built through Tulane’s research and commercialization ecosystem.
For the broader university innovation community, Biophoundry provides a useful example of how institutional GAP support can prepare early technologies for clinical partnerships, regulatory development, and follow-on capital.
Source: Tulane Innovation Institute — “Tulane Ventures Invests in Biophoundry”
https://innovation.tulane.edu/tulane-ventures-invests-biophoundry
