DesignMedix, spun out of Portland State University in 2006, is an Oregon-based biotech company developing new drugs to combat infectious diseases. DesignMedix has designed and synthesized a library of novel drugs to combat several important infectious diseases, including some that have been shown to overcome malaria drug resistance in human red blood cells in the lab, and to provide a cure when tested on animals.

DesignMedix also has identified new anti-bacterial drug candidates able to kill E. coli bacteria that cause food poisoning and Staph—Aureus bacteria that cause drug-resistant infections in hospital patients. DesignMedix's experimental drugs are more than ten-times more effective than most other drugs, lowering costs and overcoming drug resistance. That could be big news in places like Southeast Asia and Africa, where drug-resistant malaria is now commonplace.

In March 2009, Business Oregon provided a grant of $246,000 through the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute(ONAMI) for DesignMedix to develop nanotech formulations of the company's anti-malarial drugs for prevention of malaria. DesignMedix has since closed an equity funding round of $1million and been awarded a grant of $1.3 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, for research and preclinical studies.