ChromaTan Helps Biotech Companies Eliminate Waste and Save Money, Bringing Life-Saving Medicines to Market Faster

Technology created by Oleg Shinkazh, founder and CEO of ChromaTan, is contributing to real advances in the production of important, life-saving medicines, and saving biotech companies -- especially pharmaceutical producers -- millions of dollars. The soft spoken Shinkzh is proud that a process he developed is making an impact on the marketplace and consumers.

“I have created a new chromatography method that eliminates many of the problems that are currently faced in the industries we serve,” Shinkazh said. “It allows our customers to cut costs by at least 50 percent.”

Founded in Boston in 2008, ChromaTan really started to experience success in 2012 when it relocated to a new home in Innovation Park at Penn State. 

Shinkazh said, “In my years in the industry, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Andrew Zydney, a Penn State professor of Chemical Engineering who is world renowned. He is a well-respected authority on separation membranes.”

Shinkazh started looking for universities that would be willing to help his enterprise grow and prosper. “Dr. Z reviewed my ideas and decided to pursue them. He called and had me here at Penn State in a week. He gave me full access to labs as well as a graduate student researcher and two undergraduate assistants.”

Early in ChromaTan’s days at Penn State, a feasibility study was conducted to demonstrate the viability of the company’s process. The study led to an application for a grant and, ultimately, grants, from the National Institute of Health and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

ChromaTan moved to a facility in the Zetachron Incubator and was mentored by Dean Bunnell of Indigo Biosciences. “He took us under his wing,” said Shinkazh. “Penn State gave us a tremendous boost, and being in Innovation Park has been very helpful. The staff here is responsive and supportive. They help us with logistics and always go above and beyond what is expected. Far above and beyond. Great things are happening in the community that is being built here. You have a lot of creative people in the same space.”

“The greatest benefit of our location in Innovation Park is the cross-pollination that goes on,” explained Boris Napadensky, ChromaTan’s vice president of engineering. “We can inspire and help each other, and we do. We get together for lunches and offer one another advice.” Shinkazh and Napadensky, who have been working together since their undergraduate days at Northeastern University in Boston, fit right into the community. 

Shinkazh added that his company benefits from the TechCelerator program. “Ben Franklin Technology Partners and the TechCelerator have really been helpful to us. They introduced us to Paul Silvis, founder of Restek and Silcotek. He and his associates have invested in us and Paul is on our board of directors. He is a truly inspiring man, always demonstrating integrity. He encourages us to be resourceful and smart.”

Silvis himself, a well-known local business leader, was a graduate of the incubator program which has evolved into the TechCelerator program offered at Innovation Park.  

Shinkazh realized that there was a significant need for a new way of producing antibodies used in medicines. “We are trying to break the bottleneck and the expenses involved in production,” said Shinkazh. “The way antibodies are made is very expensive. A genetically engineered cell is used in the reaction. It takes anywhere from a week to three months to create the protein and then you harvest for medicines. You wind up with a soup and our goal is to get one molecule out of it. It is an involved process with 12 operations, including various filtrations and centrifuges. One operation costs almost 50 percent of the entire process. Our process helps to simplify things.”

Both Shinkazh and Napadensky have worked in industry Research and Development and saw the money that was being “dumped down the drain. There was tremendous waste and we saw that our industry was way behind other industries,” Shinkazh said.

He readily admits that he had no capital and was an engineer, not a business executive. His experiences through Penn State and the Park have changed that. Today, with his patented technology and powerful business partners, Shinkazh and ChromaTan are on their way to improving their industry and changing more lives.