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Mass High
Tech - May 25, 2011
Mass.
Life Sciences Center awards $2M in matching grants
Mass High Tech
The Massachusetts
Life Sciences Center doled out $2 million total in grants to four companies
Advantagene Inc., Hepregen Inc., Immunetics Inc. and Reflectance
Medical Inc. as part of its Small Business Matching Grant Program.
The program awarded
$500,000 from the life sciences center to each of the recipients, matching
federal small business grants previously awarded to the companies.
The four grants are
part of the second round of Small Business Matching Grants; The first
round awarded $1.5 million in grants to three companies in May 2010. The
program, created under the Life Sciences Act of 2008, requires that qualifying
companies must adhere to the U.S. Small Business Administration definition
of a small business, and they must have taken in either Phase 2 or Post-Phase
2 Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer
grants from federal agencies.
Newton-based Advantagene
is developing ProstAtak as a prostate cancer treatment, and last week
said that it reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
on a Special Protocol Assessment for a Phase 3 clinical trial of ProstAtak.
Hepregen, located
in Medford, makes and commercializes HepatoPac as a micro-liver drug discovery
platform. Its goal is to reduce the liver toxicity caused by approved
drugs.
Boston-based Immunetics
develops tests for infectious diseases and pathogens, included tests approved
by the FDA for Lyme disease and anthrax. Earlier this month it won a three-year,
$2.4 million Phase 2 SBIR grant that will aid the Boston company in bringing
its confirmatory test for Chagas disease, a potentially fatal parasitic
infection, to clinical trials.
Westborough physiological
sensor company Reflectance Medical develops its CareGuide platform to
help doctors, patients, and healthcare workers to determine a patients
metabolic status.
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