CED member lands Phase II SBIR Contract

BioMedomics, a privately held biotechnology company co-founded by Frank Wang, Ph.D., to develop advanced medical diagnostics tools for use in the fast-growing field of personalized medicine, has received a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the National Institutes of Health.

The company, which opened its doors in 2006 and last year received a $25,000 North Carolina Biotechnology Center loan, had received a $100,000 Phase I SBIR grant to help it demonstrate the scientific merit of its medical diagnostic technologies. BioMedomics’ product line includes reagents, assay instruments and data analysis tools targeting point-of-care personalized testing for specific disease biomarkers.

The field of personalized medicine is growing rapidly and may transform the healthcare system by enabling testing for variations in genes, gene expression, proteins, metabolites and cellular functions. Rather than using the “common denominator” or “shotgun” approach of developing a chemical to treat everyone with a certain malady, scientists are increasingly targeting individual patients’ profiles to detect problems – and to fix them.

BioMedomics' personalized diagnostics are based on the technology of multiplexed genomics and proteomics detection. The firm already has developed several unique biomarker reagent products and begun to sell an advanced biosensor system for advanced cell assay applications, said Wang, president and CEO of BioMedomics.

Last year the Biotechnology Center provided BioMedomics a $25,000 Business Development Loan to help pay for inception activities while developing its point-of-care personalized testing technologies.

"That BDL loan helped us lay the groundwork needed to qualify for this valuable SBIR funding," Wang said.

“The North Carolina Biotechnology Center is a unique and powerful ally in keeping North Carolina in the forefront of global bioscience activity, not only with its business loans and other programs nurturing start-up companies, but also in education, workforce development and academic recruitment activities.

"This grant indicates that the NIH sees great promise in our scientific approach and our commercialization strategy to develop an accurate, simple, reliable, sensitive, and high-throughput diagnostics platform that relies on a limited amount of clinical samples."

John Richert, vice president of the Biotechnology Center's Business and Technology Development Program, added his perspective.

“It’s always very gratifying to see the NIH, the Department of Defense and the angel and venture investment communities reinforce our early support of a young bioscience company with follow-on funding,” Richert said. “BioMedomics' technology and business focus exemplify the kinds of qualities that make North Carolina increasingly important on the cutting-edge bioscience stage.”

The Biotechnology Center has awarded more than $16 million to more than 100 North Carolina biotechnology companies since 1989. On average, the companies have brought in about $100 for every dollar loaned by the Biotechnology Center.

The Biotechnology Center is a private, non-profit corporation supported by the N.C. General Assembly. Its mission is to provide long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business and education statewide.