Red Wing med-tech plant to ramp up operations under new CEO

Longtime Twin Cities businesswoman Tammy Lee has accepted a role as CEO of a company that makes FDA-registered products for therapeutic cooling, including wearables made in Minnesota that treat symptoms of menopause without hormone-replacement therapy.

Lee confirmed this week that she's becoming CEO of a new entity with the trade name Nanocore Corporation, which has a manufacturing operation in Red Wing.

As a subsidiary of Delaware-domiciled DTI Holdings, Nanocore Corp. sells products under the brands Nanohealth USA and Nanopause USA. The products are registered with the Food and Drug Administration as low-risk devices for sale in the U.S.

Although Nanocore's products include cooling wraps for pain relief for the neck, back, joints and elsewhere, the company plans to put a special emphasis on its $200 shoulder-worn Nanopause wrap for menopause symptoms, Lee said. The products are available online or by prescription.

The company recently begun completed fund raising of $2.5 million in convertible debt that will be used for marketing efforts, particularly media targeted at women for the flagship Nanopause wrap, Lee said.

Nanocore has 10 employees today, but Lee said she hopes to quickly grow that number by the end of the year, as the Red Wing plant ramps up commercial production.

"I want to double or triple the capacity of the Red Wing plant in the next six months, and then an exponential of that next year," she said. "I'm a new CEO brought in to scale operations as quickly as possible."

Prior to working at Nanocore, Lee was most recently the president and CEO of St. Paul biotech startup Recombinetics, which uses gene editing techniques to create animals for precision breeding and medical research. Lee was the top executive when Recombinetics completed a $34 million Series A capital raise last August.

Lee's other past roles include serving as vice president for corporate affairs at Carlson Companies and vice president of corporate affairs at Delta Air Lines.