This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Ramani Ramchandran, a Medical College of Wisconsin researcher and president and founder of CIAN, Inc.
Ramchandran, a developmental vascular biologist with MCW, discusses his work studying blood vessels in the brain and how it led to the formation of the startup. That research has focused on tiny hairlike structures called cilia that are found on cells, including those that play a role in blood vessel function.
“We have found that these structures fall off the blood vessel when the blood flow is altered,” Ramchandran said. “So we thought, if the blood flow is altered and this thing falls off, can we detect the cilia and the proteins inside these structures in blood? And we were able to do that.”
This idea of using cilia as a biomarker or warning sign for altered blood flow was critical to the formation of CIAN, which stands for cilia analysis. The business is now in the early stages of product development, and is working toward using these biomarkers for a testing kit.
“We are looking for space to house the company, and we have applied for funding at the national level to sort of generate the resources needed to get the product development up and running,” he said.
Given the potential applications of these kits in brain injury care, they could be used for military applications as well as by civilians, including pediatric and adult patients.
Test development will be conducted at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Ramchandran said, giving company leaders a better idea of what the kits can do.
“So we will be essentially developing it for level one trauma centers in the United States right now, and then move from Milwaukee to the Midwest region trauma centers,” he said. “That’s our initial goal, and then move to other markets after that.”
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
