NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — NanoView Biosciences announced today that it has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to finalize development of its ExoView system for the characterization of exosomes and other extracellular vesicles.
According to Boston-based NanoView, the ExoView technology uses single particle interferometric reflective imaging sensing to detect the enhanced scattering of extracellular vesicles bound to a microarray surface via antibody/antigen interaction. The platform, the company said, is capable of measuring the concentration and size of extracellular vesicles as small as 40 nanometers and requires no sample labeling.
With the Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant, NanoView said it will refine the platform to enable measurements with less sample volume, the detection of less concentrated targets, and to increase throughput with a new workflow that bypasses certain purification protocols. The company also aims to scale its manufacturing process and improve the shelf life of ExoView consumables.
"There is growing awareness about the important role exosomes play in the body, and researchers are justifiably excited about their potential to diagnose and treat disease," NanoView CEO Jerry Williamson said in a statement. "Traditional methods used to analyze exosomes cannot efficiently and accurately identify and characterize these tiny extracellular vesicles. Our ExoView platform will solve this problem, and the NSF funding will allow us to advance the technology further as we prepare for commercialization early next year."