Blocking spread in HIV-positives is battleplan for Sonoma County medtech startup Collidion

A North Bay serial biotechnology entrepreneur is back, this time with a sizable move out of the gate for a meditech startup that is tackling vexing problems with HIV treatment.

Hojabr “Hoji” Alimi exited Ruthigen, a Santa Rosa-based developer of post-operation infection-busters, upon its merger with Lexington, Mass.-based Pulmatrix. He had led Ruthigen in 2013 as it spun off from Oculus Innovative Sciences, a Petaluma-based wound-care products maker. Alimi created Oculus as MicroMed Laboratories in April 1999, changing the name to Oculus in 2001 then taking the company public in 2007.

His latest venture, Santa Rosa-based Collidion (collidion.com), has leased 13,243 square feet at 1758 Corporate Cir. in Petaluma’s Lakeville Business Park. He briefly talked to the Business Journal but didn’t return calls seeking more information.

Collidion’s website says it’s a medical technology company that acquires or licenses undervalued drugs and health care devices. It mentions two products in the preclinical stage of development that target the remaining infection by the most common variation of the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV-1, after various antiretroviral therapies are used. One drug is an HIV-1 TAT inhibitor, a small molecule designed to suppress the production of HIV by inhibiting TAT-mediated transcription protein activity. The other is an HIV-1 capsid inhibitor, crafted to inhibit the production of HIV by interrupting viral capsid formation. They’re meant to be a complimentary strategy to stop the proliferation of the virus in patients.