A Biotech Firm With its Eyes on the Prize

Despite CBI's decidedly low-tech location (its lab facilities are located off of Young Street near McCully), the company's 12 employees are working on some very high-tech life science products. Its primary focus is regenerative medicine, or the bioengineering of replacement parts for aging and diseased tissues and organs. CBI's most advanced technology, which involves the growth of cornea (the outermost layer of an eyeball) cells, has potentially a multi-billion dollar market. "Corneal transplants are the most frequently performed human transplant procedure," says Wuh. "But there are still about 10 million people worldwide who are blind from corneal-associated diseases because there aren't enough donors. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate the need for donors entirely." In the U.S., where 40,000 transplants are performed annually, there's a $200 million market for corneas. In Japan, where, because of cultural beliefs, there are only 1,000 corneas donated annually, there's a backlog of 200,000 people in need of corneal transplants. That's a $1 billion opportunity in Japan alone. And that's just one of CBI's current technologies.

Cellular Bioengineering CEO Hank Wuh (fourth from right) stands behind his team 100 percent. Photo: Cory Lum

The company is also working on neuro regeneration, or, more specifically, growing nerves, which has multiple applications, such as growing brain cells on microchips for cognitive computing and cell transplantation for Parkinson's Disease. For the small, obscure biotech firm nestled in the environs of Moiliili, it's all very exciting stuff. Not to mention gratifying. "There are those that believe that regenerative medicine is going to be the next revolution in the biotech industry. We based our headquarters in Hawaii as a platform to be able to recruit talented people, who are both from here and not from here, as well as bring technologies from different parts of the world back to Hawaii for development," says Wuh, who started the company with $7 million in federal, state and private equity funding. "The neuro regeneration technology is a good example of that. Lawrence Berkley [National] Lab, which has a $500 million annual budget and 10 Nobel Prize laureates, created this really interesting technology, and they could've licensed the development to anyone - GE, Johnson & Johnson, Merck - but no, it ended up here at CBI in Hawaii. That's quite remarkable for a local company." That it is. Hope they're ready for the limelight.