Biotechnology Startup Innate Immunity Expands to Fort Collins

Field test work. Photo courtesy of Michelle Miller.

Four-year-old biotechnology startup focused on plant and crop health, Innate Immunity, is expanding to Fort Collins to combat further devastating bacterial, viral, and fungal diseases affecting crops including grapes, citruses, apples, and pears.

Innate Immunity is currently based at the New Mexico Consortium Laboratory located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The startup will be operating out of laboratory and office space in the Innosphere Ventures building in Fort Collins.

“We have collaborative and rich partnerships with leading industry, research, and government entities,” said Michelle Miller, co-founder of Innate Immunity. “Expanding our operations to Fort Collins has allowed up to better work with Colorado State University on our infection greenhouse trials,” Michelle said.

Photo courtesy of Michelle Miller.

Innate Immunity has created a novel chimeric peptide topical plant therapy that aids in clearing plant diseases from the host. Plant diseases caused oranges to be down a total of 73 percent and grapefruit production down 89 percent last year since 2003.

Spinoff company from Innate Immunity, LLC, and biotech startup Immunologocial Solutions, Inc. focuses on utilizing the natural human response towards infection as a method to battle antibiotic-resistant strains that cause disease chronic illness. Immunological Solutions, Inc. is now working on completing validation of its therapeutic approach to engineer human-derived new peptides and proteins to treat many diseases.

Innate Immunity is actively working on field trials in New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and California and their field trials with Colorado State University.

“I am excited to be working with a biotech startup like Innate Immunity because they’re lean, highly-productive, and have a talented business entrepreneur of Michelle Miller scaling the company,” said Ben Walker, Innosphere client manager and director of the NoCoBio Cluster. “We’re excited to have them located at Innosphere, and their co-founders can count on the support of our commercialization program and our bioscience community,” Ben said.


For more information regarding Innate Immunity or its spinoff startup, Immunological Solutions, call Michelle Miller, co-founder, and CEO, at 505-310-5711

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