Bangladeshi Nabanita on Forbes `30 Under 30 Local Toronto` list

Canada expatriate Bangladeshi Nabanita Nawar has been featured in the first-ever Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Toronto list. Renowned magazine unveiled the list on Wednesday.

Introducing the young leaders on the list, Forbes wrote, “Meet Toronto’s 30 young leaders under 30 who are helping drones fly safely in cities, transforming food waste into plastic alternatives and building tools to detect AI-written text.”

Nabanita is the co-founder of HDAX Therapeutics, which is developing the first-ever therapy for peripheral neuropathy (PN), which affects over 30 million people worldwide. Pimyupa Manaswiyoungkul, another co-founder of HDAX Therapeutics, was also featured on the list. Nabanita is the chief executive officer (CEO) while Pimyupa is chief operating officer (COO).

Expressing her reaction to Prothom Alo over Whatsapp, Nabanita said, “I was elated to see my name in such a prestigious list. I’m grateful to my family, friends and relatives. I couldn’t have continued my work without their help. I want to continue working on realising our vision.”

Forbes said Toronto has been called the next Silicon Valley and a city renowned for its entrepreneurial and multicultural spirit. Nabanita said Forbes called nominations from the youth on their various initiatives. Sifting through a large number of applications, Forbes shortlisted and reviewed works of selected applicants. It later finalised the list assessing the details of the candidates’ activities.

“HDAX Therapeutics is developing the first-ever therapy for peripheral neuropathy (PN), which affects over 30 million people worldwide. PN patients suffer from nerve damage (due to chemotherapy, diabetes, injury or genetics) that causes pain, sensation loss, immobility and paralysis. There is currently no medicine that can slow, halt or reverse the disease’s progression. HDAX is on track to dose patients as early as 2025. The women-led team made up of people of color has filed multiple patents and partnered with top cancer research clinics worldwide. The Toronto-based company was built on five years of academic research at the University of Toronto and spun out by PhD-trained entrepreneurs. It has raised over $800,000,” Forbes wrote on its website.

Other than Nabanita and Pimyupa, HDAX Therapeutics has two more co-founders. They are executive chairman Dr Roman Fleck and Toronto University’s professor Patrick Gunning.

“PN damages patients' nerves. It affects mostly when a patient is undergoing cancer treatment. There are other causes of it too. Many people suffer from paralysis, loss of memory, loss of sight and various other physical conditions due to nerve damage. No medicine of PN has yet been discovered.”

Nabanita said the medicine they are working on has already been experimented on mice. “We hope to experiment the drug on humans after two years.” HDAX’s vision is to discover drugs for the diseases that do not have any medicine yet. Discovering a drug and bringing it to the clinical stage takes time. HDAX is now doing research only on PN. The process would take 10 years. They have already applied for two patents.

Nabanita has been living in Toronto for 10 years. A Bangladeshi passport holder, Nabanita got permanent residence in Canada. She was born on 11 November 1994 in Narayanganj. Her father Mahbubur Rahman is a garment factory owner and mother Gulshan Parvin is a housewife. Nabanita is the eldest of two siblings. She tied knot with engineer Wasif Azim Chowdhury in 2021.“My whole family lives in Bangladesh,” Nabanita said.

After clearing A-levels exams from Dhaka’s Aga Khan School, Nabanita went to study Biomedical Chemistry at Toronto University on a partial scholarship. She obtained PhD from the same university in Medicinal Chemistry while continuing research. She co-founded HDAX Therapeutics in 2021. She also occasionally takes classes at Toronto University.

“I always had an interest in life sciences but didn’t want to be a physician. I developed a keen interest in ‘medicinal chemistry’ while studying and researching. It’s important as to how people can be served by chemistry.” And HDAX Therapeutics is striding towards that vision.

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