Biotechnology company, Antigen Discovery has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The US $600,000 grant will be disbursed over a period of two years to support the joint research initiative between Antigen and the University of California’s (UCI) Henry Samueli School of Engineering to devise a completely integrated microfluidic point-of-care diagnostic platform.
The risk of contracting infectious diseases has risen with threat from bioterrorism, natural disease outbreaks and mass disasters. This has fostered the need for swift, accurate and instantly deployable diagnostics. The collaborative effort between Antigen and UCI is to develop such a diagnostic device by integrating the innovative air-liquid cavity acoustic transducer (ALCAT) technology established by Dr. Abraham Lee's team at UCI, protein microarray technology from Antigen and a vast collection of serodiagnostic antigens sourced from targeted infectious diseases.
According to Dr. Abraham Lee, most point-of-care (POC) diagnostics employ different actuators for each fluidic process. The ALCAT’s single actuation technology makes it easier to incorporate it on a chip which in turn simplifies the integration of ALCAT-based approach with protein microarray assays. This serves to reduce production costs and development time of enzymes as all components can be integrated in a disposable assay. Though Antigen has been awarded numerous grants by SBIR in the past, this is the first time a grant has been awarded for medical device development.
Source: http://www.antigendiscovery.com/