When Demetri Maxim was seven years old, his mother’s kidneys stopped working. She was put on dialysis, which meant that she had to go to the hospital four times a week to have her blood filtered by a machine since her own kidneys could no longer function independently.
Two years later, Maxim’s mother received a kidney transplant. Although the surgery was successful and allowed her to lead a relatively normal life, it wasn’t the end of his family’s struggle with kidney disease. It turned out that Maxim had inherited the disease, Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), from her.
About one in seven Americans has Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and about 10% of those CKD cases are due to a genetic condition. Maxim has been obsessed with finding a cure for himself and others ever since he was in high school.
Maxim’s “Aha!” moment occurred in 2021, when Nature Magazine published a study proving that PKD is reversible in mice using CRISPR technology. At the time, he was pursuing his graduate degree in computational biology at Stanford while simultaneously engaging in kidney research under his professor, Vivek Bhalla.
Although Maxim was convinced that gene therapy could reverse PKD, the biggest hurdle was creating a mechanism to deliver the drugs directly to the diseased cells.
To solve this critical challenge, he founded Nephrogen in 2022, a biotech startup that uses AI and advanced screening to develop a specialized delivery system for safely getting gene-editing medicines into the exact cells in the kidney. Nephrogen is one of the 20 finalists in Startup Battlefield, part of News Disrupt 2025.
After three years of development, Maxim claims Nephrogen has succeeded in creating a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more efficient at transporting medicine to the kidney than the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA.
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The next major step for Nephrogen is to advance its novel delivery mechanism, along with a drug the startup developed, into clinical studies, which Maxim anticipates will begin in 2027. To support this, the company is raising a $4 million seed round.
Maxim intends to participate in the clinical study himself, given the significant challenges he faces living with PKD.
“You get a lot of back pain. You have to go to the hospital a lot. You are on this drug that’s supposed to slow the progression, but it doesn’t really do anything. Just makes you pee all the time,” he said, adding that there is always a risk that his disease will progress to require dialysis.
This makes Nephrogen’s approach all the more critical, as its success could cure him of PKD entirely.
If you want to hear from Nephrogen firsthand, and see dozens of additional pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make the connections that drive business results, head here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
