Six Delaware Bioscience Companies Thriving Under the Radar
- Sussex County Republican Committee
- Jun 2
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 3
June 2, 2026
Imagine a vaccine that fights disease without using a virus at all.
That idea may sound futuristic, but Delaware biotech company Uvax Bio is already working to make it reality. They are part of a growing wave of Delaware biotech startups rethinking medicine itself. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all treatments, many of these companies are developing therapies that are more targeted, biologically driven and potentially less damaging to the body.
Tracing back to DuPont, Delaware is home to several bioscience, pharmaceutical and life science start-up and sleeper companies. While all of them are interesting, The Delaware Business Times considers the following especially worth watching.
Corrixr Therapeutics
Cancer treatment can sometimes feel worse than the disease itself. Corrixr Therapeutics is trying to change that.
The Newark company is developing genetic medicines for some of the world’s most common and difficult to treat cancers, squamous cell cancers of the lung, head, neck and esophagus. Rather than simply attacking cancer broadly, Corrixr’s lead therapy, CXR101, targets NRF2, a protein researchers describe as a kind of survival engine that helps tumors grow and resist treatment.
The idea is to shut down what keeps certain cancers alive while potentially avoiding harsh side effects associated with chemotherapy and radiation.
The company remains in the preclinical stage, meaning its therapy has only been tested in laboratory and animal studies so far. But company officials say early animal testing has shown promising tumor shrinkage, and Corrixr is now working toward becoming “IND ready,” the regulatory milestone required before beginning human clinical trials.
Corrixr grew out of more than seven years of research at ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute in Wilmington, one of the nation’s leading gene-editing research centers. That background helped researchers identify new ways to target NRF2 and develop therapies rooted in genetic medicine — a broader field that uses genetic material and related technologies to treat disease.
Though the company has fewer than 10 employees, leaders believe the treatment could eventually work as both a standalone therapy and in combination with existing cancer treatments.
For Corrixr, the goal is not simply to kill cancer cells, but to attack the systems that allow tumors to survive in the first place.
Cell BioEngines
The race to find a bone marrow donor begins almost immediately after a patient is diagnosed with blood cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma. Finding the necessary close genetic match can be difficult. Many patients don’t find one in time.
Cell BioEngines, based at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, is trying to eliminate that race entirely.
Founded in 2002, the company is developing “off-the-shelf” cell therapies, treatments that are pre-made, built from healthy stem cells that can be stored, shipped and given to patients without needing a custom donor match for every case. The broader vision is to move cancer treatment away from highly individualized therapies that can take weeks to manufacture and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We take stem cells from donated umbilical cord blood as material that would otherwise be discarded at birth and use a breakthrough chemical process to multiply them greater than 100 times, creating enough medicine from a single donation to treat multiple patients,” Ajay Vishwakarma, CEO and founder of the company said.
Its lead therapy, SAVI-CORD, is designed for blood cancer patients who need bone marrow transplants but cannot find a matching donor. Early clinical trial results involving five patients showed 100% survival, no relapse and minimal graft-versus-host disease, a dangerous complication where transplanted donor cells attack the patient’s body. They are looking to begin expanded testing in the near future.
Therapies like SAVI-CORD could eventually be manufactured in bulk and distributed more like traditional medicines, potentially lowering costs and expanding access to treatment. The company expects the therapy could reach the commercial market by 2032, Vishwakarma said.
Cell BioEngines is also developing NeoDC-ACT, a cell therapy targeting solid tumors such as metastatic colon cancer. The treatment is moving toward first-in-human studies.
The startup has raised more than $6.25 million to date in private and Delaware state grants and is pursuing an additional $15 million.
Wilmington PharmaTech
While many biotech companies focus on discovering new drugs, Wilmington PharmaTech specializes in something equally important: figuring out how to actually make them.
Operating quietly in Newark, the company develops active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the chemical compounds that make medicines work. The company partners with pharmaceutical and biotech firms to solve their difficult chemistry problems and help grow promising discoveries from research into commercial production.
Founded in 2003, Wilmington PharmaTech operates on a 54-acre FDA-inspected campus with research labs, pilot manufacturing facilitiesand commercial-scale production suites. It has worked on more than 1,000 drug ingredient candidates and supported more than 200 investigational new drug submissions.
“We’ve been able to generate over 161 patents,” Kent Payne, managing director said. “Several of these products are multi-billion-dollar products.”
Having space is one of the company’s major advantages. The larger facility allows Wilmington PharmaTech to build specialized dedicated containment systems for handling highly potent and potentially dangerous compounds safely. It permits the company to take on technically complex projects other manufacturers avoid.
In March, the company announced a $50 million expansion that should more than double manufacturing capacity in Delaware.
One growing focus is targeted cancer therapies designed to deliver toxic treatments more precisely to tumors. Payne compared some of the work to a “smart bomb” that delivers treatment directly to cancer cells while limiting damage elsewhere in the body.
The company also develops manufacturing processes that lower costs and reduce waste. For example, Payne said, some drug molecules can form in nearly identical “left-handed” and “right-handed” versions even though only one works properly in the body. Wilmington PharmaTech has developed ways to manufacture only the desired version, reducing unnecessary production steps and expense.
Hartlon Vascular
Hartlon Vascular is developing a medical device that could help patients with severe circulation problems avoid repeat surgeries and even amputations.
Working out of the of The Innovation Space at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, the Delaware startup is creating a dissolving stent for peripheral artery disease, or PAD, a condition that narrows arteries in the legs and reduces blood flow. PAD affects more than 200 million people worldwide and can lead to chronic pain, wounds that will not heal and, in severe cases, limb loss.
Most stents used today are permanent metal implants. Hartlon’s device is designed to hold an artery open temporarily, release medicine directly into the vessel and then slowly dissolve once healing occurs.
“A lot of people don’t realize it, but the metal stent is really only needed for probably about six months,” John “Jack” Scanlon, company president, said. “It’s like a permanent metal cage in your artery.”
Earlier dissolving stents often failed because they were too thick and restricted blood flow. Hartlon solved that problem by creating extremely thin layers of PLLA, a biodegradable material also used in dissolving stitches. The thin sheets are rolled into tiny tubes strong enough to support arteries while also delivering medication over time.
Formally founded in 2023, Hartlon was a 2022 recipient of a $100,000 Delaware EDGE grant. The company is now preparing for animal testing, usually the second of four very long steps before the treatment makes it to market.
Uvax Bio
While people worry about future pandemics, Uvax Bio works on vaccines to stop them before they happen.
The Newark company is developing vaccines designed to create broader and longer-lasting protection against fast-changing viruses, specifically influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS. They are also exploring therapies for HIV and COVID-19.
Unlike traditional vaccines, Uvax does not use weakened or inactive viruses. Instead, the company uses proprietary protein nanoparticle technology designed to mimic how viruses look to the immune system causing the immune system to create antibodies to protect the body.
“We’re not using a virus at all,” CEO Kevin O’Neill said. “We’re just using a protein structure that looks like the virus.”
The company’s lead projects include a MERS vaccine currently in animal studies and a broader influenza vaccine O’Neill described as a possible “super flu shot” or universal flu vaccine. Human trials could begin within 12 to 18 months.
Founded in 2018 as a spinoff from California-based Scripps Research, Uvax chose Delaware for its business incentives and its proximity to research facilities. Funding comes from more than $10 million in National Institutes of Health grants for HIV vaccine research, along with up to $2.6 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to support MERS vaccine development.
For now, to maximize funds, Uvax employs only six full-time workers while outsourcing much of its research and development work. They hope to expand operations in Delaware as products move closer to commercialization, said O’Neill.
Synnovation Therapies is a biotech company focused on creating new medicines from the ground up. Based at the DuPont Experimental Station in Delaware, Synnovation stands out as a full-service developer of therapeutics: It both discovers new drug compounds through chemistry and then develops them through clinical testing.
The company specializes in small molecule drugs, typically pills or capsules designed to interact with specific biological targets inside the body. Instead of focusing on just one type of cancer, Synnovation looks at genetic mutations or pathways that appear across multiple cancers, such as breast, ovarian, or pancreatic, and develops drugs that can treat patients based on those shared traits. The goal is to design “precision medicines,” meaning treatments that target specific problems in the body rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
Helping reach that goal is a recently signed deal with Switzerland based, Novartis. Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will pay $2 billion upfront and up to $1 billion in milestone payments to Synnovation to acquire its subsidiary, Pikavation Therapeutics, Inc. Pikavation develops targeted cancer pills. Their main drug (SNV4818) is designed to attack certain cancerous tumors while leaving healthy cells alone, the goal being to kill cancer more effectively with fewer severe side effects. Watch for more on this deal.
