Portfolio Companies

Arrowhead Research Corporation forms or acquires companies pursuing product and technology development in nanotechnology. Arrowhead's strategy is to maintain or build a majority interest in its portfolio companies. We provide financial, administrative, corporate and strategic resources. This structure is designed to enable each management and technical team at the portfolio level to focus on developing specific technologies for specific markets.

Arrowhead currently has two majority-owned subsidiaries, Unidym and Calando, and has minority investments in two early-stage nanotechnology companies, Nanotope, Inc. and Leonardo Biosystems, Inc.

Unidym is a leader in the manufacture and application of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a novel material with extraordinary electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. Unidym provides bulk materials, CNT-enabled products, and intellectual property to a wide range of customers and business partners.

Calando Pharmaceuticals, Inc. employs its proprietary nanotechnology exclusively on therapeutic use of RNAi (RNA interference), a technique to “silence” the expression of genes that cause diseases.  Calando’s self-assembling nanoparticles, comprised of Calando’s proprietary polymer delivery system and in RNAi therapeutic, are designed for intravenous injection and have shown exemplary results in small-scale animal studies.

Nanotope is a regenerative medicine company developing a highly flexible and customizable platform out of Northwestern University. Nanotope is developing a suite of products, each customized to regenerate specific tissues; including neuronal, vascular, bone, myocardial, and cartilage. The products are injectable compounds that work with surviving cells in and around the point of damage to initiate and support tissue regeneration and growth. Once regeneration is complete, the compounds are safely broken down and removed by the body. Nanotope is positioned to enter into a commercialization corporate partnership in 2010 and expects to be able to start a first round of clinical trials in 2010.