A lab in Pittsburgh that runs on one stubborn protein
On any given week inside Imagine Pharma's Forbes Avenue lab, two things are happening at once. In one room, technicians isolate insulin-producing islet cells from donor pancreases - careful, clinical, billable work for hospital systems across the country. In another, scientists culture cells and tweak a polypeptide called IMG-1, chasing something far less certain: a way to put injectable drugs into a pill, and maybe to end type 1 diabetes outright.
That split personality is the whole point. Imagine Pharma is a roughly 15-person company doing the unglamorous service work that pays bills today while betting on the moonshot science that might matter in a decade. Most biotechs pick a lane. This one decided to run a clinical islet center and a three-platform drug pipeline at the same time, which is either disciplined or stubborn, depending on the morning.
“Revolutionary treatments that change patients’ lives.”
- The company tagline, stated without a hint of ironyBiologics work. The needle is the catch.
Here is the inconvenient fact at the center of modern medicine: many of the best drugs - insulin, erythropoietin, GLP-1 agonists - are biologics. They are large, fragile molecules. Swallow one and your gut dismantles it before it does anything useful. So patients inject. Daily, sometimes more. For decades, “take it orally” has been the thing biologics could not do.
Diabetes makes the cost of that limitation obvious. Type 1 patients manage a relentless schedule of injections and finger-sticks; type 2 patients face wounds that heal slowly or not at all. The market is enormous and, depending on the condition, underserved. The gap is not subtle. The gap is a needle.
“Our natural delivery system allows injectable biologic drugs to be administered orally.”
- Imagine Pharma, on the Oral Delivery platformA surgeon, a tea plant, and a polypeptide
Dr. Ngoc L. Thai is an internationally recognized transplant surgeon. He is also, by his own account, the person who noticed something interesting in a tea plant native to his homeland of Vietnam. That curiosity became IMG-1, the polypeptide that now sits at the base of everything the company does. Thai founded Imagine Pharma in 2016 and, in an arrangement that tells you something about the size of the team, still serves as Founder, co-CEO, and Chief Medical Officer at once.
His co-CEO, Santiago Pujadas, brings the other half: roughly 30 years of running operations and turning ideas into companies. The bet they made together is unusual. Rather than license IMG-1 into a single drug, they built three platforms on top of it - Oral Delivery, Therapeutics, and Regenerative Medicine - on the theory that one well-understood molecule can do more than one job. It is a bigger swing than most startups attempt, and it gives investors more ways to be right, and more ways to be wrong.
Around the two of them sits a small bench of specialists: Jonathan Pollett, the chief research officer working on cardiovascular and endothelial applications of IMG-1; Rita Bottino, who runs the islet programs and the isolation services; and a general counsel with nearly three decades in pharma. For a company of this size, that is a deep-ish roster of people who have done this before - which matters, because the science here leaves little room for learning on the job.
“I am thrilled by the exceptional interest during our raise and by the composition of our investor syndicate.”
- Santiago Pujadas, co-CEO, on the $32.5M Series AOne molecule, three jobs
IMG-1 is the thread. Everything below it is an attempt to put that thread to work in a different part of medicine. The naming is refreshingly literal - oral programs are “PT,” regenerative programs are “TOP” - as if the company would rather spend its cleverness on the science than the branding.
Oral Delivery
A delivery system meant to let injectable biologics survive the gut and be taken by mouth. Programs: PT-1 (oral EPO), PT-2 (oral Octreotide), PT-3 (oral GLP-1 agonist).
Therapeutics
Novel treatments that either improve on existing therapies or fill gaps where, until now, there were none. The catch-all where IMG-1 becomes a drug in its own right.
Regenerative Medicine
Proprietary culture methods to grow critical human cell types. Programs: TOP-1 (skin graft), TOP-2 (diabetic wound), TOP-3 (burns).
AIPCs & Islet Transplant
Activated Islet Progenitor Cells and an autologous transplant program aimed at restoring the body’s own insulin-producing capacity - the closest thing here to a cure.
The short, busy history Milestones
What is actually on the table
Ambition is cheap in biotech. Evidence is the expensive part. Imagine Pharma’s evidence today is a mix of the concrete and the promising. On the concrete side: an NIH-approved islet isolation center and more than 32 completed clinical isolation procedures for leading U.S. hospital systems. That is real clinical work, with real customers, generating real relationships in the diabetes field.
On the promising side: oral EPO and oral GLP-1 programs moving toward IND submissions, and a research collaboration with fellow Pittsburgh biotech LyGenesis to chase a type 1 diabetes cell therapy. The $32.5M Series A, led by IP Investors LLC in October 2023, is the market’s vote that this is worth funding past the idea stage.
The skeptic’s caveat belongs here too. An approved islet center is a clinical credential, not a clinical trial; named programs are a pipeline, not a product. Oral biologics in particular have a long graveyard - the gut is unforgiving, and plenty of well-funded companies have promised the swallowable injection and come up short. Imagine Pharma has not yet published the kind of late-stage human data that would settle the argument. What it has is a coherent thesis, paying customers in the diabetes field, and enough capital to find out whether IMG-1 is as versatile as the founders believe.
Where a single molecule is pointed
Counts reflect publicly named programs (PT-1/2/3, TOP-1/2/3, AIPC transplant). Breadth, not stage - most remain pre-clinical.
“A unique oral delivery system for biologics, and a novel nutritional supplement with the potential to address numerous health and wellness issues.”
- Dr. Ngoc Thai, Founder, co-CEO & CMOMake injections obsolete. Cure diabetes. Heal wounds faster.
Stated plainly, the mission sounds like three separate companies. Stated as Imagine Pharma sees it, they are one problem viewed from three angles - and IMG-1 is the lens. Make biologics oral and you ease the daily burden of chronic disease. Restore insulin-producing cells and you take aim at the disease itself. Speed wound healing and you close one of diabetes’ most expensive complications.
It is a lot to promise from a 15-person team. The honest read is that Imagine Pharma is early, and most of its pipeline is pre-clinical. But the islet center gives it something many early biotechs lack: a foothold in real clinical practice while the longer bets mature.
“First-in-class programs that address multiple disease states in large, underserved markets.”
- How the company describes its own ambitionBack to that lab on Forbes Avenue
Return to the two rooms. The islet isolation work will keep happening - it is clinical, it is needed, and it pays. The harder question is the room next door, where IMG-1 is being asked to do things no single molecule has been proven to do across oral delivery, regeneration, and a diabetes cure all at once.
If even one of those bets lands - an oral biologic that survives the gut, an islet program that restores insulin, a wound therapy that beats the clock - the patient experience changes in a way a press release cannot capture. If none do, Imagine Pharma will still be a competent islet center with an interesting story about a tea plant. That is the honest range. What is not in doubt is the clarity of the question they are asking: why should a good drug require a needle? They have spent a decade refusing to accept the usual answer.