Profile of Pyrodex Founder Djik Maouyo

Pyrodex Testing is headquartered at the Harbor Launch at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, which is a startup incubator and community for science and science support companies. IMET recently featured Pyrodex Founder Djik Maouyo in a profile on their blog:

People with truly incredible minds walk the halls of IMET, one of those being our friend and colleague, Dr. DjikoIngar “Djik” Maouyo. Dr. Maouyo is a molecular biologist whose company, PyroDex, is a part of IMET’s Harbor Launch Incubator. While we are excited to tell you about Djik’s science, we want to start by describing a small piece of his journey into the field of biology.

Djik was born in Chad, a country in north-central Africa. According to the Borgen Project, “Chad has consistently remained one of the poorest countries in Africa”. When Djik was 22 years old and had just begun his first year at the University of Chad, his country descended into civil war. Djik’s education was put on hold while his country waged war.

They also write at length about Pyrodex’s expertise:

Currently, only 7% of medical drugs that make it to phase 1 of clinical trials actually reach the market. Many of these failures may be due to contaminants that cannot be detected using current methods. When 93% of potential drugs produce no return, pharmaceutical companies need to recover their losses by increasing the price of drugs associated with the treatments that succeed.

With better methods to detect microbial contamination we could increase the percent of medical drugs that make it to the market, therefore decreasing the price of treatment. This is where PyroDex comes in…