NEW YORK(GenomeWeb) – HealthTell said today that it has received a $225,000 SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The funds will support work to evaluate the effectiveness of the company's immunosignature technology in the diagnosis of brain cancer, and glioblastoma multiforme, specifically.
According to HealthTell, the company aims through the project to demonstrate its platform's ability to distinguish primary brain cancers from brain cancers arising as metastases from other sites; and to differentiate brain cancer subtypes and grades of malignant gliomas.
The project will be carried out in collaboration with Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center and the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, from which Healthtell was spun out in 2010.
HealthTell's immunosignature approach uses random-sequence peptide microarrays to capture antibodies in patient blood samples. Based on the levels and patterns of antibody binding, researchers build antibody expression profiles that can then be correlated with various disease states.