( CNN ) -- As young children , the stress and burden of our life-threatening allergies to a range of common foods , including nuts , seafood , shellfish , eggs and other substances , really fell on our parents more than us . Like many kids , we were unaware and felt invincible . We did n't worry too much about managing our allergies . That changed after the first severe allergic reaction either of us had . Evan was playing at a friend 's house when he ate what he had been assured was a `` fake peanut . '' Almost immediately , it was apparent that something was very , very wrong . Luckily , his friend 's dad also happened to be Evan 's doctor ; he treated him immediately , and the incident was resolved . Life-threatening allergies were much less common when we went to school , so we really stood out as the `` strange twins with allergies '' -- those guys who had to sit at a separate table by themselves at lunchtime . It is unfortunate that severe allergies are much more widespread now , but there is a silver lining : People and organizations are more aware and better able to support the children and adults who suffer . The idea to develop a new epinephrine auto-injector ( commonly known as an EpiPen ) , specifically designed for the needs of patients like us , came about the summer after we graduated high school . We were on our way to a family vacation in Europe , and it looked as if , once again , the two of us had not packed our EpiPens . They were too bulky so we often did n't carry them . After the usual finger-pointing and questions about why we did n't carry something that could save our lives , the idea of developing a smaller , more portable type of epinephrine auto-injector was born . At the time , we had recently selected our college majors . ( Evan went into the engineering program at the University of Virginia , and Eric chose pre-med/medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University . ) We decided to customize our education to develop the skills necessary to make this invention a reality . At the start of each school year we reviewed our course options and decided together which classes to take that would help us achieve our goal . Our first real funding came from winning a collegiate inventors ' grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance . It was at that point we knew we were on our way . Soon after we confirmed what we had already suspected : that developing a new pharmaceutical product is extremely complicated . To do it successfully would require deep industry expertise . We founded Intelliject , which now has a leadership team with more than 100 years of combined experience in the pharmaceutical industry . We are fortunate to work with a team of industry veterans who are just as committed to patients as we are . As we say , the patients are the real experts -- we just need to create the opportunities to capture their insight and design products that truly address their needs . Our entire approach puts the user at the center of development from the beginning of the process . It is hard to describe the feeling now that Auvi-Q -- the epinephrine auto-injector that is a culmination of the ideas we had all those years ago -- is available in pharmacies across the United States ( and as Allerject in Canada ) . If you had asked us on the day of the launch in January , we would have told you that it simply ca n't get any better than this . But we were wrong . About a month after Auvi-Q 's launch , we read a Facebook post in which a mother described how her daughter had a severe allergic reaction . She described how Auvi-Q helped her by `` having a voice walking through the steps in an emergency situation . '' In her opinion , Auvi-Q saved her daughter 's life . We can confidently say that there is no better feeling than that .
Evan and Eric Edwards founded Auvi - X , which launched in January . Their research started the summer after they graduated high school . The Edwards brothers say the brothers are the real medical experts .