Academic medical centers (AMCs) are among the United States’ most active hives of biomedical innovation thanks to their often robust research enterprises. Increasingly, AMCs like the Heersink School of Medicine play a central role in another realm of innovation: the biomedical/biotech start-up space. According to Rubin Pillay, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the UAB Marnix E. Heersink Institute for Biomedical Innovation, assistant dean for Global Health Innovation in the Heersink School of Medicine, and chief innovation officer for UAB Health System, a start-up is essentially a new business entity created to commercialize intellectual property. The Heersink Institute for Biomedical Innovation is a primary player in getting start-ups based on biomedical intellectual property developed within UAB off the ground. “You can be a faculty member, a researcher, a staff member—if you have an idea with commercial potential, our institute provides the support to set up a commercially viable entity to take your idea to the market,” Pillay said.
Other partners in the start-up ecosystem include the Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which houses UAB’s technology transfer office, the UAB Research Foundation; the Station 41 biotechnology commercialization hub housed at Southern Research, a translational scientific research organization and UAB affiliate; and state and local incubators and accelerators like Innovate Alabama, Innovation Depot, and the Prosper HealthTech Accelerator. “One of our functions is to act as a catalyst between all the players,” Pillay explained. “We provide counsel in terms of the process, we help people work with the tech transfer office, we help them work with funding and financing—we catalyze the whole process out of our institute.”
UAB’s start-up portfolio reflects this dynamism, with five start-ups launched and 10 start-ups approved and poised for launch in 2024 alone. What’s more, Pillay says AMCs are ideal environments for launching successful start-ups because they have the right combination of ingredients. “The technology is already there. The infrastructure is already there. The brain power is already there. And, I think, the biggest factor is the problems are there. That’s the reason you set up a start-up—you’ve identified a problem and you have a potential solution. The fact that health care is littered with problems that need to be addressed makes this a uniquely logical and fertile space for start-ups.”
On the following pages, we highlight a few of the biomedical and biotech start-ups that have originated in the Heersink School of Medicine, offering a glimpse into the breadth of creative solutions our experts have devised to improve health outcomes. Through collaboration and support, Heersink is cultivating a fertile ecosystem for innovation and ensuring that our groundbreaking research translates into real-world solutions.
Alveolus Bio
About: Changes in microbial signatures of the lungs and airways are associated with worsening chronic respiratory disease and persistent inflammation. Alveolus Bio harnesses the therapeutic power of commensal bacteria strains and their byproducts for inhaled delivery of biotherapeutics straight to the lungs.
Founder: C. Vivek Lal, M.D., associate professor in the UAB Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics
Year Founded: 2020
Learn More: alveolusbio.com
Noted: In 2023, Alveolus Bio became one of the few Alabama-based therapeutics companies ever to receive a $2.5 million FastTrack Grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for “An inhaled microbiome-targeted biotherapeutic for treatment of COPD.”
Body Check
About: Body Check has developed an FDA cleared, preventative health platform that uses AI to detect unmanaged chronic conditions within imaging exams that are acquired for other purposes. The first commercially available clinical product identifies underlying cardiomegaly, or enlarged heart, prioritizing access to care for high-risk individuals.
Founders: Steven Rothenberg, M.D., assistant professor, and Andrew Smith, M.D., Ph.D., adjunct professor, in the UAB Department of Radiology
Year Founded: 2022
Learn More: bodycheck.ai
Noted: Rothenberg is the co-inventor of a UAB patent for care coordination software and digital therapeutics related to opportunistic screening; co-founded the first AI marketplace in medical imaging (EnvoyAI, acquired 2018); and is the co-director of AI in Imaging for the Department of Radiology. Smith, an inventor on 30 patents and a co-founder of three start-up companies, was named chair of Diagnostic Imaging at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in April 2024 and remains on the UAB Radiology adjunct faculty.
Curanostics
About: Curanostics is a HIPAA-compliant platform designed to securely collect, organize, and summarize a patient’s medical records using AI. It enables individuals to better understand their health data and seamlessly share it with their health care providers.
Founders: Christian Lopez Blanco, a UAB Neuroengineering Ph.D. trainee; Yash Vagal, a computer engineering graduate student at Georgia Tech; and Quinlan Mewborne, a technologist at the Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville, who met through the NIH’s Bio-Entrepreneurship Capstone.
Year Founded: 2023
Learn More: curanostics.health
Noted: The Curanostics team was chosen as a headlining presenter at the 2024 BIO International Convention in San Diego, one of the biggest events for biotech companies. They also won first place in the poster competition at UAB’s Second Annual Disability Health Symposium.
Dialytix
About: Kidney disease takes a toll on the health care system: 37 million people in the U.S. have kidney disease, $48 billion is spent on treatment of kidney disease in the U.S. per year, and 27 percent of hospital stays in the U.S. have acute kidney injury. Without better data, readmissions and higher acuity and mortality rates will continue. Dialytix provides the first kidney disease care management platform focused on delivering real-time multimodal data integration from electronic health records, dialysis devices, and finance for quality improvement, operational efficiency, and capacity management.
Founders: Javier Neyra, M.D., associate professor in the UAB Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, co-director of UAB Critical Care Nephrology, and co-director of the Clinical and Innovation Cores of the UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center for Acute Kidney Injury Research; Rubin Pillay, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the UAB Marnix E. Heersink Institute for Biomedical Innovation, assistant dean for Global Health Innovation in the Heersink School of Medicine, and chief innovation officer for UAB Health System; and Ruben Raposo, CEO of Dialytix and three-time UAB graduate (Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems, Master of Engineering in Information Engineering Management, and Executive Master of Science in Health Administration).
Year Founded: 2023
Learn More: dialytix.com
Noted: In April 2024, Dialytix was one of five health-related tech startups to receive $60,000 each as part of the Birmingham-based Prosper Healthtech Accelerator. A team co-led by Neyra also was awarded a $20,000 Priya Nagar, M.D., Innovation Award for Kidney-Related Diseases in February 2025. The team is collaborating with Dialytix to develop an AI-powered clinical decision support tool to help health care professionals optimize treatment decisions for critically ill patients with acute kidney injury undergoing continuous renal replacement therapy.
Endomimetics
About: Endomimetics is dedicated to transforming patient care through biomimetic nanotechnology, developing advanced coatings and gels that enhance healing and improve the functionality of medical implants. The proprietary Bionanomatrix technology addresses major challenges in cardiovascular health, dialysis access, orthopedic implants, dental regeneration, and brain aneurysm treatment.
Founders: Ho-Wook Jun, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Brigitta Brott, M.D., professor in the UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease, Department of Medicine.
Year Founded: 2009
Learn More: endomimetics.com
Noted: In September 2024, Endomimetics was awarded a $2.8 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to research the potential of Bionanomatrix to improve performance of flow diverters used in the treatment of brain aneurysms.
ReACT FND Health
About: ReACT (Retraining and Control Therapy), developed by Aaron Fobian, Ph.D., is a novel treatment that uses research-supported approaches designed to help manage and reduce the symptoms of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which can include seizure-like episodes, tics, tremors, paralysis, difficulty walking, dizziness, cognitive function difficulties, speech difficulties, and other symptoms. ReACT uses principles of habit reversal and other evidence-based techniques to retrain the involuntary, reflexive functional symptoms, empowering individuals to regain control over their bodies. The mission of ReACT FND Health is to expand access to research-supported FND treatment, including offering telehealth ReACT treatment to individuals diagnosed with FND throughout the U.S. and empowering and training clinicians to implement ReACT in their own practices.
Founder: Aaron Fobian, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology.
Year Founded: 2024
Learn More: reactfnd.health
Noted: ReACT FND Health began accepting patients into ReACT treatment in January 2025 and has already begun helping individuals with FND throughout the U.S. In April 2025, they trained providers in Iceland to implement ReACT. In 2020, Fobian published the positive results of a 29-participant trial of ReACT that was the first randomized controlled trial of any treatment for pediatric functional seizures. She is currently conducting two funded randomized controlled trials to further establish ReACT’s effectiveness.
TIXiMED
About: There are currently no oral medications for Type 1 diabetes, and no specific drug is available to inhibit TXNIP (thioredoxin-interacting protein), a newly identified therapeutic target that is increased in diabetes and causes beta cell death and islet cell dysfucntion. TIX100 is a novel, TXNIP-inhibiting, oral diabetes drug that protects against models of Types 1 and 2 diabetes as well as MASLD (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease), which is often associated with diabetes. TIXiMED was established to develop and commercialize TIX100 as a first-of-its-kind oral therapeutic for Types 1 and 2 diabetes.
Founder: Anath Shalev, M.D., professor in the UAB Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, and director of the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center
Year Founded: 2021
Learn More: tiximed.com
Noted: In July 2024, TIXiMED obtained clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration to proceed to clinical trials under an Investigational New Drug for TIX100, giving TIXiMED the green light to start human studies with TIX100. On February 28, 2025, TIXiMED announced the successful dosing of the first cohort of subjects of this Phase 1 clinical trial.