DIANT® Pharma Inc.: Transforming Medicine Through Continuous Manufacturing

When the world urgently needed COVID-19 vaccines, one thing became clear: traditional drug manufacturing was too slow and too fragmented to keep up with global demand. Batch manufacturing — the decades-old industry standard — required stopping, testing, and restarting at every step, creating delays that slowed innovation and raised costs. For cutting-edge medicines, these inefficiencies meant lifesaving treatments couldn’t reach patients fast enough.


At the University of Connecticut (UConn), Professor Diane Burgess and Dr. Antonio Costa asked a bold question: What if we could eliminate those bottlenecks entirely? Their solution was a breakthrough: a continuous manufacturing platform purpose-built for nanoparticle-based medicines, developed with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Instead of halting production between steps, continuous manufacturing allows everything to happen seamlessly on one integrated line, with real-time testing and control.

The impact is revolutionary. Continuous manufacturing dramatically speeds up production, ensures consistent quality, and reduces costs. “It’s like going from a stop-and-go traffic jam to the Autobahn without limits for medicine,” says Costa. These advances aligned with the FDA’s call for modern manufacturing technologies to improve quality, consistency, and affordability in drug production.

In 2019, Costa and Burgess co-founded DIANT® Pharma, Inc. to bring this innovation to market. Today, DIANT® offers a range of systems, from research-scale to full cGMP manufacturing platforms, powered by their proprietary DIANT® Jet technology with integrated process analytical technology (PAT) and downstream processing. This technology continuously produces pharmaceutical-grade nanoparticles, including liposomes, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs,) polymeric nanoparticles, and nanosuspensions – with unmatched precision and scalability.

The ripple effects are enormous:
  • Faster access to therapies: Biopharma companies can accelerate development timelines, bringing new treatments to patients sooner.
  • Pandemic readiness: In a health crisis, vaccine production can be scaled up in weeks rather than months.
  • Lower costs and higher quality: Automated, closed-loop processes reduce contamination risk and manufacturing footprint.
Behind DIANT®’s success is a strong partnership with UConn’s Technology Commercialization Services (TCS), which protected the intellectual property, developed a patent strategy, and structured a license that balanced startup needs with the university’s mission. “The support we received from UConn’s TCS was critical,” says Costa. “It allowed us to focus on turning the science into something that could help patients.”

Dr. Amit Kumar, Senior Director of Licensing, who structured the license agreement, stated, “Today, DIANT®​ is more than just a startup — it is redefining how medicines are made. By transforming a traditionally complex and fragmented process into a seamless, scalable system, DIANT® is paving the way for a future where lifesaving therapies reach patients faster, safer, and more reliably — precisely when the world needs them most.”
 

This story was originally published in 2026.