NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Fluxion Biosciences has been awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue developing high-throughput screening technologies for anti-microbial drug development research, the company said today.
The Phase II grant will continue development of the company’s microfluidic platform for cellular research and drug discovery. The first phase of the project identified a high-throughput screening approach for anti-microbial drugs, and the second phase will focus on integrating the drug screening approach into a fully automated platform, the company said.
The system is based on high-throughput functional screening of live bacteria or cells, and the company expects it may be used in development of drugs for treatment of cardiovascular and immune disorders.
"The results of our Phase I project showed significant gains over conventional drug screening approaches. This platform promises to be a powerful tool for developing the next generation of drug therapies,” Christian Ionescu-Zanetti, Fluxion’s chief technology officer, said in a statement.