The company’s core technology is exclusively licensed from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where it was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Saxon, one of the company’s founders. Dr. Saxon initially discovered the fusion protein GE2, resulting in a series of prominent publications. Subsequently, the platform technology has resulted in a pipeline that includes Tunitas’ lead program, epsi-gam, as well as the allergy vaccine platform. Shortly after formation of the company, Drs. Saxon and Sigal developed a capital-efficient business model to fund the early development of the platform. As experienced academicians with a long track record of successful grant-writing and funding, they began writing grant proposals, the first of which was funded in 2010. To date, Tunitas has been awarded $9.5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Immune Tolerance Networks. These funds were used for the discovery and preclinical development of epsi-gam prior to Tunitas’ series A funding in April 2015. In addition, Grant funding has been and continues to be used to advance the allergy vaccine platform. The Company has seven US patents with broad generic and composition-of-matter claims, five of which are from UCLA and the others owned exclusively by Tunitas.