CDG Therapeutics (CDGT) was incorporated in the State of Delaware, May 2001, to commercialize certain inventions discovered at the University of Illinois, Chicago College of Medicine. Two faculty members, Ananda M. Chakrabarty Ph.D. and Tapas K. Das Gupta, M.D., Ph.D. D. Sc. founded the company. Its mission is to develop and commercialize novel therapeutic peptides derived from the cupredoxin family of bacterial and plant proteins as anti-cancer agents. Dr. Das Gupta is an internationally recognized surgical oncologist. Dr. Chakrabarty is a renowned microbiologist who was granted the first patent on a (engineered) living organism Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He prevailed in the US Supreme Court case Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which accelerated the global evolution of intellectual property law pertaining to biotechnology.
The company possesses an exclusive worldwide license to commercialize the founders’ discoveries. These exclusive rights were granted to CDG by the University of Illinois in exchange for royalties on any commercial products to emerge from the company’s efforts, as well as an equity stake held by the University. The royalty rates and equity stake granted to the University of Illinois by CDG are consistent with those between other development stage companies and their respective university partners. In addition to several NIH and NCI grants to the founders that initiated this research, CDGT’s activities have been funded through private equity investments.
The company currently has 15 full and part time employees including 4 Ph.D. scientists across a multi-disciplinary spectrum of expertise which includes pharmacology, cell biology, microbiology, molecular biology and experimental pathology. Several CDG employees and Directors have previous corporate (pharmaceutical) and regulatory experience as well as sustained funding from the NIH.
