When Demetri Maxim was seven years old, his mother’s kidneys stopped working. She was undergoing dialysis. That meant she had to go to the hospital four times a week to have her blood filtered through a machine because her own kidneys were no longer working independently.
Two years later, Maxim’s mother received a kidney transplant. Although the surgery was successful and she was able to live a relatively normal life, her family’s battle with kidney disease did not end there. It turned out that Maxim had inherited a disease called polycystic kidney disease (PKD) from his girlfriend.
Approximately 1 in 7 Americans has chronic kidney disease (CKD), and approximately 10% of CKD cases are caused by genetic conditions. Since high school, Maxim has been obsessed with finding a cure for himself and others.
Maxim’s “aha!” moment happened in 2021. The journal Nature published a study using CRISPR technology to prove that PKD in mice is reversible. At the time, he was pursuing a graduate degree in computational biology at Stanford University, while also working on kidney research under professor Vivek Bala.
Maxim was confident that gene therapy could reverse PKD, but the biggest hurdle was building a mechanism to deliver the drug directly to diseased cells.
He founded Nephrogen in 2022 to solve this critical challenge. Nephrogen is a biotech startup that uses AI and advanced screening to develop specialized delivery systems to safely introduce gene-editing drugs into precise cells in the kidney. Nephrogen is one of 20 finalists in the Startup Battlefield, part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Maxim claims that after three years of development, Nephrogen has successfully created a delivery mechanism that transports drugs to the kidneys 100 times more efficiently than the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA.
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Nephrogen’s next big step will be to advance the startup’s drug along with its new delivery mechanism into clinical studies, which Maxim expects to begin in 2027. To support this, the company has raised a $4 million seed round.
Maxim intends to participate in clinical research himself, given the significant challenges faced in living with PKD.
“My back pain is getting worse. I have to go to the hospital a lot. I’m on medication that’s supposed to slow it down, but it doesn’t really do anything. I just pee all the time,” he said, adding there was always a risk that the disease would progress and he would need dialysis.
This makes Nephrogen’s approach even more important, and its success could lead to a complete cure for his PKD.
If you want to hear directly from Nephrogen, see more pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make connections that drive business results, go here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, taking place in San Francisco from October 27th to 29th.
