Company History
HemoShear, LLC was founded in January 2008 to guide drug development companies in the discovery and selection of new drug candidates that have superior efficacy and safety profiles, leveraging our proprietary, human surrogate technology, which closely mimics the human blood vessel system (vasculature). By imposing blood flow shear forces upon human blood vessel cells in the laboratory, HemoShear’s technology induces the cells to behave as if they were in a human.
The technology was co-invented at the University of Virginia by Brett Blackman, Ph.D. and Brian Wamhoff, Ph.D. Dr. Blackman is a tenured associate professor of biomedical engineering and leads a successful laboratory investigating the role of blood flow forces in regulating vascular endothelial cell biology in cardiovascular disease. Dr. Wamhoff is a biologist and animal physiologist and leads a successful lab that studies mechanisms that regulate smooth muscle cell biology in cardiovascular disease and injury.
In early 2008, the Company filed non-provisional and PCT patent applications with the U.S and international authorities. Through much of 2008 and into early 2009, the Company conducted a number of proof-of-concept (PoC) studies in order to demonstrate the technology’s ability to recreate the biology of the human artery and to demonstrate the technology’s ability to reliably predict human responses to known drugs.
During the latter half of 2008 and early 2009, the Company raised two rounds of equity financing from angel investors, totaling $5 million, and leased an entire building containing 8,000 square feet of office and laboratory space. HemoShear conducts its laboratory operations, business operations, and R&D at this site.
In October 2009, HemoShear formed a new division named HepaShear to develop an advanced model of the human liver. This will support efforts to discover drugs targeted at the liver, including cholesterol regulating agents, diabetes treatments, and cirrhosis. HepaShear is the second of many hemodynamically driven human surrogate organ system models that the Company plans to develop.
