10 Buffalo Business Spring 2022
I
n Austria, CEO Gábor Somogyi, MD, MBA '03, is lead-
ing Eveliqure Biotechnologies to develop a vaccine that
combats diarrheal disease.
It's a project with massive potential. According to the
World Health Organization, diarrheal disease is the second
leading cause of death in children, taking the lives of more
than 500,000 children under five each year. It's also a problem
for travelers, who see up to 300 million
cases per year, and for the U.S. military,
which loses 1.1 million duty days every
year because of the illness.
Somogyi didn't immediately start
out in biotech aer graduation,
though. He first joined the Hungarian
film tech startup Colorfront as its
managing director. With Somogyi at
the helm, the company inked a deal
with director Peter Jackson to use its
color correction soware in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Colorfront led the post-production digital revolution, won a
technical Oscar and sold to Autodesk Inc. for $15 million just
two years later.
But with his medical background and a drive to help
people, Somogyi was drawn to biomedical entrepreneur-
ship to maximize the reach of his work. He says if Eveliqure's
vaccine is successful, it could save hundreds of thousands of
children each year—but the impact would be even greater
than that.
"It's not just the mortality rate, it's also the morbidity
rate," says Somogyi. "There's a long-term stunting effect with
this disease, so the people who get it tend to be less developed
physically, mentally and even emotionally over the course of
their lives."
The outlook for Eveliqure is promising. In late 2020, the
firm was awarded a $20.6 million contract from the National
INNOVATING
HEALTH CARE
The growth of entrepreneurship
in a changing industry
By Kevin Manne
Somogyi
