I-Lab Medical Teams Focus on Allergies and Sexual Health

As dozens of teams at the Harvard Innovation Lab tackle contemporary challenges with their entrepreneurial projects, Confi and Antera Therapeutics stand out in the field of medicine.

The Harvard Innovation Lab. By Y. Kit Wu

Founded this past summer at the i-Lab, Confi serves as an online platform that crowdsources advice on sexual health targeted at women and works in tandem with medical experts to shed light on topics some might consider too taboo to ask about.

“Our goal when creating Confi is that there was really no one resource for people when they have questions about sexual health,” said Kristen Y. Shim ’17, a member of Confi’s four-woman team. "People usually go to online forums for information, and that’s not reliable information, and it’s often very sexist.”

According to Confi CEO and Harvard Business School student Tess D. Brooks, studies conducted by the company have shown that women often feel uncomfortable buying sexual health products at pharmacies or at online vendors like Amazon. In response, Confi plans to sell feminine sexual health “starter kits,” featuring an assortment of condoms, lubricants, and pregnancy tests. Shim said Confi will test this profit-generating model in the spring.

For Confi, increasing the number of online users, having seen its web traffic increase by 60 percent over the past quarter, and finding sources of revenue are top priorities, Brooks said. While Confi will soon test the viability of selling feminine health products as a method of generating profit, Confi may also begin to approach corporate sponsors.

Another team, Antera, founded in December 2014, is looking to become the leading expert in vaccination against food and environmental allergens. The company focuses on reducing the prevalence of peanut allergies, which have increased threefold in the United States since 2004, according to founder and CEO Clarence D. Friedman. The startup is “disrupting the model of healthcare,” by targeting allergen tolerance from a preventative standpoint, added Friedman, a 2015 Business School graduate.

Antera’s current product, Aralyte, is a concentrated dosage of peanut protein given to children from infancy to expose them to the potential allergen. While unique, this approach to allergies is supported by contemporary research in the field, according to Friedman. He added that a February 2015 study on early prevention of peanut allergies conducted by the Immune Tolerance Network supported the company’s claims.

“In the future we’ll expand to the other allergens that account for 95 percent of food allergies such as tree nuts, shellfish, soy, and wheat,” Friedman said, adding that the company will continue beta-testing Aralyte for another four months. “We’d really like to go to environmental allergies too. We really want to become the company that vaccinates against all allergies.”

Approaching allergies from this perspective comes with its own set of challenges, said Friedman and Caroline L. Sokol, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a member of Antera’s scientific advisory board.

Because of the potential for an adverse reaction to the peanut protein, a physician administers the first dose, while parents administer the subsequent doses. According to Sokol, this process will require some testing.

“It is not a common method of administering medication,” she said. “You have parents out there who, if there has been a family history of peanut allergies, are nervous about giving that first dose of a potential allergen to their kid.”

Friedman pointed to having access to resources and a network of entrepreneurs through the i-Lab as pivotal to his company’s success.

“It’s a nice little circle where everyone is helping each other out, and it’s been an incubator in the best sense of the word,” Friedman said. “We have grown extremely quickly due to the people around.”

—Staff writer Ignacio Sabate can be reached at ignacio.sabate@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ignacio_sabate.