Chromosome-focused biotech names CEO with funding chops

LONGMONT — KromaTiD Inc. will replace CEO Christopher Tompkins  with Nathan Wood, the company said. Tompkins moves to chief technology officer of the biotech.

The change is related to KromaTiD beginning to commercialize its research. Wood was most recently CEO with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Swift Biosciences Inc., a maker of research tools for genomics, which involves DNA-mapping.

KromaTiD is developing products for disease research, mutation detection, and chromosome analysis via directional genomic hybridization technology licensed from Colorado State University and developed at the Fort Collins campus and by University of Texas medical researchers in Galveston.

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In Wood’s three years at Swift, it raised $15 million in funding. Swift sold in February to the Integrated DNA Technologies unit of Danaher Corp. (NYSE: DHR), a $225 billion-market-cap maker of medical and industrial products based in Washington, D.C.

“Nathan has a well-documented track record of success commercializing research tools,” said KromaTiD board chair Dr. Terry Opgenorth, in a press release.

Wood, “is joining KromaTiD at a commercial inflection point,” Tompkins said in the release.

Tompkins has a chemical engineering Ph.D. and executive experience with firms including Proligo LLC in Boulder, a unit of Frankfurt-based chemicals maker Degussa-Hüls AG.

In March, AUTM, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit association of academics working in technology transfers by universities, discussed KromaTiD’s platform and described a NASA study using dGH. The research included astronauts who were twin brothers, one of whom went into space for a year while the other stayed on the ground.

The research sought information on space radiation’s effects on potentially cancer- and disease-causing genomic structural variation, including chromosomal mutations such as inversions: when a bit of DNA breaks off, flips around, and rejoins the chromosome.

In the release, Wood cited possible uses in “regenerative medicine, gene therapy and cancer diagnostics.”

NASA was also interested in “understanding … the inherent risks of space flight,” AUTM said.

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