Cathryn Nager, PhD (Bunning Food Allergy Professor; Professor in Pathology, Medicine, Pediatrics, the Committee on Immunology and the College), is the president and co-founder of ClostraBio, a drug development company focused on gut microbiota and the immune system. Nagler and co-founder Jeffrey A. Hubbell, PhD (Institute for Molecular Engineering), started the company following Nagler’s team’s discovery of important gut microbiota in infants that affected immune responses to certain allergens. John Colson, a postdoc at IME and a senior associate at UChicago Innovation Fund at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, worked closely with Nagler to develop the business.
Though Nagler was not previously interested in entrepreneurship, working with the Polsky Center enabled her to get ClostraBio up and running in a year. The Polsky Center, Nagler says, “has wrapped [so many different kinds of mentorship] around this effort” that they are “aware of things that other developing companies may not be aware of.”
Read the full article at UChicago News.