A practice, not a platform
Star Biopharma Solutions exists because the handoffs in translational research are where programmes lose time. Every seam between design, execution, readout and interpretation is a delay and a chance to lose the thread.
01Approach
How the work is done
One thread from question to report
The same scientist scopes the study, specifies the readouts, interprets what comes back, and writes it up. That is unusual, and it is the whole proposition: no translation loss between the person who chose the endpoint and the person explaining what the endpoint showed. For a small sponsor without internal preclinical staff, it replaces three vendors and the coordination between them.
Independent of any bench
We do not own instruments and do not want to. That means no incentive to route your work toward equipment we need to keep busy. Recommendations on which CRO to use, which assay to run, and whether a dataset supports the conclusion being drawn from it are made without a commercial stake in the answer — which is exactly why sponsors ask for them.
Built to be checked
Nothing is delivered as a conclusion you have to take on trust. If a reviewer, a regulator, or the scientist who replaces you wants to retrace how a result was reached and confirm it independently, they can — without calling us. Work that cannot survive that test was not worth commissioning in the first place.
02Principal
Who does the work
Akash Gupta, Ph.D., M.L.S. Cert.
Founder & Principal Scientist
Fifteen years in preclinical and translational research across academic, CRO and pharmaceutical-funded settings — most recently as Scientist IV at the University of Arizona, leading biomarker discovery in pulmonary arterial hypertension and neonatal lung and gut disease.
Ph.D. in Biology from the Illinois Institute of Technology, with a thesis on genetically engineered aromatase-overexpressing and aromatase-inhibitor-resistant breast cancer cell lines. M.Sc. in Biotechnology and B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Madras. Graduate certificates in Clinical Research Management (Arizona State University) and Regulatory Science (University of Arizona, taught with Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Critical Path Institute).
Earlier roles at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University, at IIT Research Institute — a preclinical CRO — and as a microbiologist at the National Center for Food Safety and Technology. Adjunct biology faculty at Pima Community College. Associate member of the American Association for Cancer Research; editor or peer reviewer for six journals.
Work is delivered by the principal, supported where scope requires by a vetted network of pathology, biostatistics and regulatory subcontractors.
Selected publications
- Tailored CD4+ lymphocytes expressing human CHAT protein as a novel vasodilator in attenuating RV pressure in a PAH animal model. Translational Research, 2025. First author.
- Deficiency of the deubiquitinase UCHL1 attenuates pulmonary arterial hypertension. Circulation, 2024. Co-first author.
- IL-18 mediates sickle cell cardiomyopathy and ventricular arrhythmias. Blood, 2021. First author.
- A novel and cost-effective ex vivo orthotopic model for human breast cancer in mouse mammary gland organ culture. Biology Open, 2020. First author.
Get started
Tell us what you are trying to find out.
If a preclinical question is stuck, a dataset is not saying what it was supposed to say, or a vendor deliverable does not look right — a twenty-minute call usually settles whether there is something here worth doing.