Company History
The roots of the company’s technology are in the world’s largest life science research organization, the prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH), where founders Drs. Nazli Azimi and Yutaka Tagaya both were trained for their post-doctoral fellowships. Both, Dr. Azimi and Dr. Tagaya were part of Dr. Thomas Waldmann’s research group, a world-leading and respected laboratory of the NIH. The focus of the lab was on cytokines of the gamma-c family, a critical group that is highly relevant in a variety of human conditions. The group has made seminal contributions to our understanding of this important cytokine family, in particular IL-15 and its receptor.
In the following years, after they both left NIH, they founded Bioniz in Irvine California to test a new conceptual hypothesis that later became the company’s platform technology.
Today, Bioniz has grown from a bold concept into a strong, emerging life sciences company with support from not only world leading business executives, but also the sharpest scientific minds in the sector.
Meet Our Founders
Dr. Nazli Azimi, Founder & CEO
Dr. Azimi is Founder & CEO of Bioniz Therapeutics and the co-inventor of its platform technology. Dr. Azimi manages operations, business strategy, financing, and scientific oversight for the company. With her passion, confidence, and multifaceted intelligence, she has not only driven the development of Bioniz’s technology platform, and the world class science that fuels it, but she has also recruited some of biotech’s leading business minds, as well as some of immunology’s most venerated experts.
Dr. Yutaka Tagaya, Co-Founder and CSO
Dr. Tagaya is the Chief Scientific Officer of the company. He also has a faculty position at the Institute of Human Virology, which is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical School. He is one of the global experts in cytokine biology. and supervises Bioniz’s scientific direction and peptide platform technology development.