Hank Wuh may have successfully avoided the limelight for the past year and a half, ever since he formed the Moiliili-based biotech firm, Cellular Bioengineering Inc. (CBI) in mid-2003. But if things continue to progress as nicely as they have for Wuh and CBI, they may soon be as ubiquitous as David Watumull and Hawaii Biotech are in the world of, well, Hawaii biotech.
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." ...read more
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