NanoInk® Awarded NIH Grant
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NanoInk, Inc. has announced that it has been awarded a $735,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Grant will be used to develop biologically functional nanostructures that enhance the reproducibility, sensitivity, and spatial density of chip-based assays.
"Creation of these nanostructures will improve life science applications ranging from point-of-care diagnosis to genomic and proteomic arrays used in basic research by enabling the development of next generation screening technologies that are faster, more sensitive, more reliable, and possibly more cost-effective than those presently available," said Cedric Loiret-Bernal, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of NanoInk.
To accomplish this objective, NanoInk will develop a patterning methodology based on Dip Pen Nanolithography (DPN®) technology to generate sub-micron sized features on solid surfaces.
The DPN method, built upon the technique of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), allows materials to be deposited uniformly in a direct-write fashion on surfaces with nanoscale spatial precision.
This approach is designed to offer advantages over current microarray printing technologies that suffer from poor location-to-location reproducibility in terms of size, shape, and biomolecule density, as well as reproducibility across microarray slides.
NanoInk will also develop a nanoarray fabrication platform consisting of a DPN arrayer, parallel multipen arrays with integrated microfluidic inking systems and appropriate pen and surface modification chemistry to allow patterning with a variety of biomolecules.
The final product of this ongoing NIH-supported research is expected to result in significant near and long-term commercial applications for the biotechnology industry.
