The ugichem GmbH emerged from Professor Ugi’s group at the Technical University Munich’s Institute for Organic Chemistry in 1998. The first developments through to 2003 were supported from the business angels Elmar and Eva Zeising.

In 2003, ugichem closed a Series A round of financing accompanied by a relocation of the company to Innsbruck, Austria. The Munich based venture capital firm, The BioScience Ventures Group AG, specialist for providing risk management capital for early-stage biotechnology companies, was leading the financing round in partnership with The Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH (Vienna) through its Life Science Austria programme and the Hypo Tirol Bank.

ugichem has successfully developed and patented a novel chemical synthesis by which any desired chemical, physical, biological, biochemical or pharmaceutical feature can easily be incorporated into an α-amino acid and peptidic structure. This makes the ugichem-technology an ideal lead structure optimisation tool for drug development. ugichem´s most innovative and patented application is a new generation of antisense drugs, based on peptide nucleic acids, called CMCOs (Cell Membrane Crossing Oligomers).