About

Martha Knight, Ph.D. Founder and Director, has used countercurrent 
chromatography for many years to purify synthetic peptides.  In the late 60’s while 
employed at the Rockefeller Univ. she purified peptides for John Morrow Stewart 
who synthesized bradykinin and angiotensin analogs on the first peptide synthesizer 
that he invented.  Martha operated the countercurrent distribution instrument, 
invented at the Rockefeller by Lyman Craig.  Later she moved with Dr. Stewart to 
the University of Colorado School of Medicine Biochemistry Dept. and earned a 
MSc in biochemistry in peptide chemistry.  Later at the National Institutes of Health 
she worked in neuropeptide research and obtained the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins 
U. and remained a few years as a Staff Fellow.  During this time—and ever since, 
she has collaborated with Yoichiro Ito in the Lab. of Technical Development, NIH, in 
the chromatography of peptides on the planetary centrifuges being invented by Ito.  
Knight founded and operated Peptide Technologies Corporation engaged in 
peptide synthesis and analytical chemistry services for 20 years in DC and 
Maryland.  In 2006, CC Biotech was established with an exclusive license from the 
NIH for the recent inventions of Dr. Ito.  The new company is manufacturing the spiral 
rotors for CCC and the new centrifugal precipitation chromatograph for bio-
separations.  Dr. Knight has over 30 papers in chromatography.
Tom Finn, Director of Manufacturing, has industry experience in manufacture, 
product development of chromatography instrumentation including analytical and 
prep HPLC, light scattering and absorbance detectors, service and international 
marketing at Varex, Americhrom-Global Technologies, Rockville MD and D-Star, 
Manassas, VA.
 
Yoichiro Ito, MD Senior Scientist, Laboratory of Bio-separations Technology, 
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, NIH, is a long-time inventor/scientist at the 
NIH who has developed cell separation and molecular separations instrumentation 
largely based on centrifugation.  He was the inventor of the flow-through blood cell 
elutriator (Aminco, Baxter-Travenol).  The coil planet centrifuge invented in early 70’s 
has been manufactured by companies all over the world and is a work-horse 
laboratory instrument in the natural products field.  Dr. Ito is the NIH licensing 
scientist and consultant on R&D and product development.  Dr Ito has about 450 
publications and over 45 patents.
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