Devgen was founded as a spin-off of Ghent University and The Flemish Institute for Biotechnology in 1997 to commercialize intellectual property it licensed on the use of RNAi in nematodes and its use for screening for therapeutics and/or their targets. Its work focused on the nematode C. elegans as a model system, which functions as a model for human diseases, but also as a model for the kind of nematodes that are agricultural pests.[1][2]