LyoGo was started by Weldon School graduate students Rush Bartlett and Art Chlebowski, as well as Krannert School of Management’s MBA student Peter Greco. They are focused on engineering delivery systems which are intuitive to use, improve safety and sterility, and reduce or eliminate the need for refrigeration, improving storage and distribution of drugs. They are developing systems for delivering drugs that are intentionally designed to easily fit into the established drug filling process of leading pharmaceutical companies.

The Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Grants Program was included in the healthcare reform legislation enacted March 2010, establishing a one-time pool of $1 billion for grants to small biotech companies developing novel therapeutics which show potential to (a) result in new therapies that either treat areas of unmet medical need, or prevent, detect, or treat chronic or acute diseases and conditions, (b) reduce long-term healthcare costs in the United States, or (c) significantly advance the goal of curing cancer within the 30-year period beginning on May 21, 2010.

LyoGo plans to utilize this grant in conjunction with their California-based development firm to optimize designs for pilot manufacturing, initially running a test batch of 100 devices.