When Demetri Maxim was seven years old, his mother’s kidneys stopped working. She underwent dialysis, which meant she had to go to hospital four times a week to have her blood filtered by a machine, as her kidneys could no longer function independently.
Two years later, Maxim’s mother received a kidney transplant. Although the surgery was successful and allowed her to live a relatively normal life, it was not the end of his family’s battle with kidney disease. It turned out that Maxim had inherited this disease, polycystic kidney disease (PKD).
For one in seven Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD) and about 10% of these cases of CKD are due to a genetic condition. Maxim has been obsessed with finding a cure for himself and others since he was in high school.
The “Aha!” of Maxim! moment happened in 2021, when the journal Nature published a study demonstrating that PKD is reversible in mice using CRISPR technology. At the time, he was pursuing a master’s degree in computational biology at Stanford while also doing kidney research under his professor, Vivek Bhalla.
Although Maxim was convinced that gene therapy could reverse PKD, the biggest hurdle was creating a mechanism to deliver the drugs directly to diseased cells.
To solve this critical challenge, he founded Nephrogen in 2022, a biotech startup that uses artificial intelligence and advanced control to develop a specialized delivery system to safely deliver gene-edited drugs to the precise cells of the kidney. Nephrogen is one of 20 finalists in Startup Battlefield, part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
After three years of development, Maxim claims that Nephrogen has succeeded in creating a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more effective in the delivery of drug to the kidney by the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA.
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The next big step for Nephrogen is to advance its new delivery mechanism, along with a drug the startup developed, into clinical studies, which Maxim expects to begin in 2027. To support that, the company is raising a $4 million seed round.
Maxim intends to participate in the clinical study himself, given the significant challenges he faces in living with PKD.
“You get a lot of back pain. You have to go to the hospital a lot. You get this drug that’s supposed to slow it down, but it doesn’t really do anything. It just makes you pee all the time,” he said, adding that there is always the risk of his disease progressing to dialysis.
This makes Nephrogen’s approach all the more critical, as its success could cure him of PKD entirely.
If you want to hear Nephrogen firsthand and see dozens of additional pitches, attend valuable workshops and make the connections that lead to business results, head here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, taking place October 27-29 in San Francisco.
