A Scientists-run
company

Optogenix origins from a research collaboration between neuroscientists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and researchers from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), initiated in 2012. The aim of the research was to develop new implantable probes for neurophysiology and Optogenetics able to advance the limitations of the tools available at that time. The most important outcome of the research was a technology based on tapered fibers – and an unconventional way to launch light into them – that was soon recognized as unique and very useful for more versatile and efficient Optogenetic stimulation of neurons in vivo. OptogeniX founders decided to patent the technology and start a company to allow other researchers to take advantage of it.

Since its foundation in 2014, OptogeniX provides all over the world tapered fibers and equipment for their operation, with more than one hundred labs served so far. More recently, the capability of tapered fibers to collect light in unconventional ways has also been established and is currently exploited by OptogeniX customers.

OptogeniX continuously collaborate with IIT researchers to improve the tapered fibers technology by integrating other functionalities, like electrical recording, biosensing, and drug delivery, with the ambition to extend the application of this technology to other fields of reserarch and, eventually, to medical applications.