By Matt Jones
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Akonni Biosystems today said that it and non-profit research firm CUBRC have received a $774,000 contract from the US Army to develop an automated sample preparation system for isolating biological threat indicators that could be used in field-based detection systems.
The firms will collaborate on the design, manufacture, and testing of prototype systems for automated nucleic acid and protein extraction from a single-source samples. The system will incorporate Akonni's TruTip technology for extraction of the genomic material.
The grant was awarded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency through the US Army Research Office.
Two months ago Akonni won a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop nucleic acid extraction and microarray-based testing systems for the identification of human diseases in cerebrospinal fluid.