ABOUT US
AxoSim was founded to address unsustainably high clinical failure rates that cost pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and patients years of waiting for new medications and therapies for serious neurological diseases. An astounding 89% of all new drugs, and 94% of neurological drugs, fail in clinical trials. A key factor driving this dismal failure rate is that animal testing that is an essential part of preclinical drug development cannot predict human results. To us, this is unacceptable when new technologies offer alternatives: researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and patients in need deserve better.
In 2014, AxoSim spun out of Tulane University with a license to proprietary technology with the potential to solve the challenge of modeling human results in vitro. Over a decade of research by our founding scientists led to the development of our NerveSim® and BrainSim® platforms that can predict clinical performance in the lab, helping our biopharmaceutical partners develop safer and more effective cures and save millions of dollars and years of development time in the process. We are working to rapidly expand the applications of our platform to address the growing burden of neurodegenerative diseases.
To that end, in 2019, AxoSim announced the acquisition of Organome and exclusively licensed the intellectual property behind Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD’s Mini-Brain platform from Johns Hopkins University, with Dr. Hartung joining AxoSim’s team as the Consulting Vice President of Scientific Affairs. The addition of this powerful platform enables us to address neurological applications across both the central and peripheral nervous systems. By providing the only two commercially-available platforms with 3D human-relevant myelination, AxoSim is truly at the cutting edge of drug development.
October 2023 marked another huge milestone for AxoSim with the acquisition of Stemonix’s microBrain™ technology and its associated assets. The acquisition gave us a third innovative 3D platform for drug discovery, a new state of the art facility, and additional team members who are experts in the technology. Our three available platforms, NerveSim®, BrainSim® and microBrain™ make AxoSim the leader in preclinical neuro drug discovery.
AxoSim’s two labs are located along the Mississippi River.
Our Upriver lab in Maple Grove, Minnesota, houses a 14,000 square ft R&D manufacturing and wet lab facility. Our Downriver lab in New Orleans, LA, is housed in the New Orleans BioInnovation Center, the city’s first LEED Gold-certified laboratory building. Downriver offers 4,000 more square ft of wet lab and operations facilities. These cutting-edge resources position our company to remain at the forefront of emerging technology and research. We have the space and the team to accomplish our goals and to have a fundamental impact on the way neurological drugs are developed.
AxoSim’s NerveSim®, BrainSim® and microBrain™ platforms are revolutionizing the way that biopharmaceutical companies develop neurological drugs. Our mission is to empower advancements in human neuroscience so that patients in need can get the care they deserve.