NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals is a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of new drugs from natural sources.
The company was founded in 2003 in Cambridge, MA (USA), by Northeastern University professors Kim Lewis and Slava Epstein.
[1] The founders had led the development of new techniques to search for useful molecules produced by the untapped vast majority of soil and marine bacteria that cannot be initially cultured in the laboratory.
They developed diffusion chambers (isolation chips) to be embedded in natural settings to grow "uncultivable" microorganisms in situ, so that they could then be extracted for study.
Over the years NovoBiotic has amassed a large collection of previously uncultivated microorganisms utilizing the diffusion chamber, and screens them for antibiotic activity.