{"id":4892,"date":"2025-09-18T10:17:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virginiahealthcareers.org\/blue-ridge\/?p=4892"},"modified":"2025-09-18T10:17:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:17:42","slug":"roanoke-biotech-company-looks-for-big-success-with-tiny-cargo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virginiahealthcareers.org\/blue-ridge\/roanoke-biotech-company-looks-for-big-success-with-tiny-cargo\/","title":{"rendered":"Roanoke biotech company looks for big success with Tiny Cargo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Researchers at a Roanoke-based biotech company might have discovered a way to extend their therapeutic delivery system\u2019s shelf life. It could lead to big advances in mitigating radiation treatment for cancer patients and the muscle damage done by heart attacks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Tad Dickens<\/a><\/strong>
September 18, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At The Tiny Cargo Co., it\u2019s not all about the cargo. The vessel plays a big role, too. Vehicle and rider together might put the company on the road to medical breakthroughs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiny Cargo\u2019s combo \u2014 a therapeutic medicine transported via cell components from a cow \u2014 could prove to be the first major commercial breakthrough to emerge from Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion. Tiny Cargo co-founders Rob Gourdie and Spencer Marsh spun it off from the institute in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eddie Amos, a former executive at Microsoft, Meridium and GE Digital, is board chair for GO Virginia Region 2 and has been following the company closely. Amos said he is a \u201cbig fan\u201d of Gourdie and Marsh. GO Virginia is a commonwealth-wide economic development initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t involved with GO Virginia \u2026 I would be an investor,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen they came up with the idea to build Tiny Cargo, it was the perfect mix of academic rigor and \u2026 to move something from the lab environment into a commercial project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, it could be a boon for patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers and clinicians have worked to develop medicines to mitigate radiation therapy\u2019s tissue damage, but there have been no so-called radioprotectants that doctors routinely use in clinic settings, said Dr. Susannah Ellsworth, clinical associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center\u2019s radiation oncology department. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight now most of our attempts at mitigating toxicity are really centered around getting patients through with good supportive care,\u201d said Ellsworth, who has no connection to the company or its researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a potential healer<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the trials for the company\u2019s proprietary peptide, called XOLacta. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the latest stop in a long journey that began during Gourdie\u2019s years at the University of South Carolina. There, his lab developed a peptide \u2014 a chain of chemically bonded amino acids<\/a> \u2014 for basic research, but once scientists there realized that the peptide showed promise as a topical treatment for wound healing, they expanded the map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A South Carolina company founded by Gautam Ghatnekar, one of Gourdie\u2019s former students, explored its work on the likes of venous leg ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers. Later, Ghatnekar had a revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbout half of patients with cancer undergo radiation therapy, but there\u2019s often pretty dire side effects from the radiation therapy, including skin burns and damage to internal organs,\u201d Gourdie said. \u201cSo Gautam, my former student, intuited that maybe the peptide, if it was helping with chronic skin wounds and healing of normal skin wounds, might help with radiation injury.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Gourdie had come to work in Roanoke and Blacksburg, where his responsibilities include professorships in biomedical engineering and mechanics, and in the College of Engineering. At his FBRI cardiovascular lab, Gourdie\u2019s team studied how the peptide might mitigate damage from a heart attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are roadblocks to using XOLacta for heart and cancer issues. The medicine would have to get inside the body to do the work, but swallowing it would break it down to the point of uselessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The microscopic cargo needed a microscopic ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started wondering whether we could load the peptide into exosomes and also mitigate radiation injury,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what set us on the path that the Tiny Cargo company is now on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2023, a Richmond-based philanthropic organization, the Red Gates Foundation, gave $50 million to FBR<\/a>I. Gourdie\u2019s lab received about $3.5 million of that gift, which will pay for the clinical trials that the FDA approved under what it calls the Animal Rule<\/a>, which allows researchers to test drugs on animals in order to have them approved for use in humans, Gourdie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gourdie also has a $6.5 million Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health. He received the seven-year award in 2022. He said he has been concerned about the funding since the Trump administration moved to cancel some of the money, a matter that is in federal appeals court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere has been no disruption to this funding,\u201d Gourdie said in a text exchange. \u201cHoping it continues copacetic till expiry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the FDA website, developing drugs for acute radiation syndrome is among the accepted circumstances, along with the virus that causes smallpox, inhalation anthrax and exposure to radiation from the likes of a nuclear accident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such cases, the FDA may grant approval based on well-controlled animal studies, if the result is liable to benefit humans\u2019 health, but ultimately the studies would have to prove safety to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hitching a lift to inner space<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that cow milk exosomes can transport peptides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exosomes are parts of a cell, essentially vessels within a cell, that are full of proteins, nucleic acids, lipids and metabolites. Cows\u2019 milk cells, for example, secrete these so-called extracellular vesicles to calves, where they impart proteins supporting immunity, growth and more benefits from Bessie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are just dozens of nanometers in diameter apiece (for perspective, about 25 million nanometers equal one inch, according to nano.gov<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiny Cargo\u2019s principals are among researchers who have found that they also have a lot of potential for humans. They can fortify infant formulas as well as supplements for gut, bone and muscle health, along with topical skin repair, according to multiple scientific publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans make them, too, but bovines provide the best for this kind of work, researchers say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gourdie and Marsh\u2019s team was able to harvest exosomes \u2014 they\u2019ve patented their process \u2014 and inject them with peptides that could then escape the body\u2019s digestive system and provide therapy. But they found yet another couple of roadblocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their shelf life precludes shipping, much less saving them for use when needed. Lyophilization, or freeze-drying, was an option, but it created clumping that made the product nonfunctional, Marsh said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the lab\u2019s Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine students, Alan Dogan, came up with a solution: an additional additive that spread out the exosomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sort of flaky powder,\u201d Gourdie said. \u201cNow we ship them freeze-dried and have noticed no reduction in efficacy as a result. In fact, the collaborators keep telling us how much they love working with the powder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lab is working with researchers at the University of Virginia on testing the peptide\u2019s efficiency post-heart attack, protecting the heart muscle from damage that can lead to failure. That work is in its early stages but looks promising, Gourdie said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other partners include a group at the University of Indiana doing breast cancer studies and a team at the Cleveland Clinic studying glioblastoma treatment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gourdie imagines a future in which Tiny Cargo capsules are part of a soldier\u2019s kit on a post-nuclear battlefield wracked with radiation. The shelf life will be about a year, Gourdie and Marsh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore I was even here, they showed that the peptide was amazingly effective and you could use it for all these different things, but it degraded so fast in the body that it wasn\u2019t actually functional,\u201d Marsh said. \u201cSo then putting in the exosomes was kind of the next step where, OK, now we can get it in there \u2026 but it required so much logistical bending over backwards to make it work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd this was sort of that last check where now we can produce this, we can make the peptide, put in the exosome, lyophilize it, sit on the shelf, and when people want it, we\u2019re going to ship it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having found the best method to preserve and ship the product, Tiny Cargo is now developing the means of production. The company is renovating a 7,000-square-foot building at Fugate Road Northeast, near Plantation Road, to house clean room space, offices, storage and shipping. The clean room, at 2,000 square feet, will provide a contamination-free environment to work with the materials, and the company might eventually add a second clean room, Marsh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company expects the space to be ready early next year. Once complete, Tiny Cargo will ramp up its business with Franklin County\u2019s Homestead Creamery, taking 250 gallons of milk every week or two. Gourdie and Marsh have been getting unpasteurized milk from the company for about five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Dogan\u2019s additive having sparked the freeze-drying process, the company is looking at the possibility of using the exosomes to deliver \u201cother cargoes,\u201d Marsh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe possibilities have amplified just because of this approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roanoke biotech company looks for big success with Tiny Cargo<\/a><\/blockquote>