IntegriDerm, the Huntsville, Ala., manufacturer of specialized DermArray, is going under the skin to develop a specialized gastrointestinal DNA array.
The development will be funded by a $147,650 National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research Phase I grant the company was awarded last week.
In this project, the company will be using a proprietary computer-assisted approach it used to select the genes for its nylon-based DermArray, which includes 4,400 skin-disease related genes, and PharmArray, which includes genes relevant to drug targets, said Tom Dooley, CEO of IntegriDerm. The new array will sell for $1,580 per nylon membrane. Each membrane can be reused five times.
This new chip signals IntegriDerms strategy to capture specialized markets within the array sector. A lot of other companies have broad strategies to screen as many genes as they can, but ours is to take a small niche area and stick with it, said Dooley. In the gastroenterology field there isnt really a product on the market, and our objective is to capture the same kinds of clients we have with the dermatology array.
The company has hired Ernest Curto, a gastroenterology specialist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as a principal investigator on the grant.
MMJ