Cyntellect announced this week that it has received a phase II SBIR grant worth $500,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop its laser-based transfection technology.

The technology — known as LEAP, or laser-enabling analysis and processing — involves temporarily permeabilizing cells with a laser so that a variety of molecules, including siRNAs, can be transfected. The laser is also used to destroy untransfected cells, so that researchers end up with a pure set of transfected cells.