Biotech Companies Will Save Millions of Dollars
Innovation Park at Penn State Helps Transform Company

The technology created by Oleg Shinkazh, founder and CEO of Chromatan, is saving biotech companies – especially pharmaceutical producers – millions of dollars. The soft-spoken Shinkazh is proud that a process he developed is contributing to real advances in the production of important medicines that save human lives.

“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 from its new home at Innovation Park at Penn State.

“In my years in the industry, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Andrew Zydney,” Shinkazh stated. “He is a Penn State professor of Chemical Engineering who is world renowned. He is a well-respected authority on separation membranes. He reviewed my ideas and saw no reason not to pursue them.”

Shinkazh started looking for universities that would be willing to help his enterprise grow and prosper. “Dr. Z 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.”

In Chromatan’s early days at Penn State, a feasibility study was conducted to demonstrate the viability of the company’s process. That 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 very responsive and supportive. They help us with logistics and always go above and beyond what is expected—far above. Great things happen in the community that is being built here, especially when you have a lot of creative people in the same space.”

“The great advantage of being located in Innovation Park at Penn State is the cross pollination that goes on in here,” explained Boris Napadensky, Chromatan’s Vice President of Engineering. “That means we can inspire and help each other, and we do. We get together for lunches and offer one another advice.” Shinkazh and Napadensky have been working together since their undergraduate days at Northeastern University in Boston.

Shinkazh added that his company benefits from the Techcelerator program. “Together with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the Techcelerator has 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 was a graduate of the incubator program which has evolved into the programs 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 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.

Shinkazh readily admits that he had no capital and was an engineer and not a business executive. Innovation Park at Penn State has changed that. Today, with his patented technology and powerful business partners, Shinkazh and Chromatan are on their way.