GROVE CITY — Forge Biologics CEO and co-founder Dr. Timothy Miller's vision has become reality.

The company has raised over $160 million in the last year to advance novel gene therapy manufacturing for clients and patients. 

“One of the diseases that we have in clinical trials is for Krabbe's disease. These are patients that demyelinate some of their nerves. Death often occurs by the age of two. What we're able to do with viral-mediated gene therapy is we take the bad stuff out of the virus that makes it a virus and put the gene in that many of the patients are missing. And we use the virus mainly as a delivery vehicle. So it will be able to give this virus and give back to the body the protein or the gene that the cells are missing,” Miller said. 

A year from now they plan to have more facilities, tripling capacity to meet growing demand. 

“And so what we're really striving to do here is to build out the capability, build out the technology both with how we produce really small scale and scaling it to thousands of liters,” said Chief Technical Officer Dr. David Dismuke. 

Miller said gene therapies have been around for a while, but major breakthroughs have occurred in the last five years. 

Miller and his team, which include co-founders Erandi De Silva and Jasson Eicholtz, currently have two approved products in the market. 

As for the future, Forge Biologics currently employs 75 but plan to increase the workforce by 200 over the next two years. 

“We chose to build out here in Columbus. We knew we could draw on a wonderful workforce and scientific expertise to build out a really reputable therapeutics and manufacturing company,” Miller said. 

For more information on Forge Biologics of Grove City, click here to visit the company's website.