Small Business Innovation Research Program Seed Funding will Support R&D to Improve Coronavirus Testing Methodology
BALTIMORE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–xMD Diagnostics, Inc. has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $256,000 to conduct research and development work to improve the reliability of coronavirus detection from patient samples. The SBIR grant is highly competitive, with fewer than 13% of applications ultimately earning an award.
xMD Diagnostics will use their proprietary tissue purification technology to develop a method that will increase the purity of coronavirus patient saliva samples. Current saliva test methods often suffer from lack of sample purity due to confounding materials in the samples such as food, water, or cigarette smoke, which ultimately decreases testing accuracy. xMD Diagnostics’ system represents a novel extraction technology, expression microdissection, that uses both biological and physical methods to reliably extract viral materials while decreasing background variability in patient samples. Increasing the purity of coronavirus patient samples via this method will improve the reliability of testing and has widespread potential to improve public health amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, Division Director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”
“We are thrilled to be the recipients of a coveted NSF SBIR grant,” stated xMD Diagnostics Inc. CEO Ting-Pau Oei. “This investment will support our ongoing efforts to expand our tissue purification technology to new and important fields of public health.”
Once a small business is awarded a Phase I SBIR grant, it becomes eligible to apply for a Phase II grant, with the opportunity for awards of up to $2 million. Small businesses with Phase II funding are also eligible to receive up to $500,000 in additional matching funds with qualifying third-party investment or sales.
“With this funding,” said Mr. Oei, “we are fully equipped to dramatically improve the ease and accuracy of coronavirus testing. It is a privilege to be selected by the NSF to continue this important work.”
About xMD Diagnostics, Inc. (xMD): xMD, headquartered in Baltimore, MD, is an emerging private precision diagnostics tools company developing instruments and consumables for use by pathologists and researchers in hospitals as well as academic, commercial, clinical, and molecular laboratories. xMD’s automated sample preparation system, known as expression microdissection, is capable of precisely isolating, selecting for, and enriching targeted cells of interest for downstream PCR and molecular testing including next generation sequencing (NGS).
The xMD platform technology system serves to significantly improve physicians’ ability to better diagnose serious diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, cardiovascular and other genetic diseases, thus improving the treatment and outcomes of patients.
About the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Programs: America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.5 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. To learn more about America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, visit: https://seedfund.nsf.gov/
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T. P. Oei