MEDFORD, Mass., September 26, 2007 – Nanobiosym Inc., announced today that it has been awarded a highly competitive $2 million contract from the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a branch of the US Department of Defense. The winners of this award were selected after an intense competition among many of the nation’s leading US academic, government, and industrial labs.
Nanobiosym, and its commercial partner Nanobiosym Diagnostics, have been privately developing Gene-RADAR®, a portable nanotechnology-enabled platform, that can rapidly and accurately detect genetic fingerprints from any biological organism. The company’s vision is to give patients worldwide real-time access to their own diagnostic information via low-cost handheld devices. Nanobiosym Diagnostics also seeks to leverage its nanotechnology platform to enable portable real-time detection of food and air-borne pathogens, as well as water testing, animal and crop testing, and screening of blood and transplant organs.
“We are delighted that DTRA has recognized our unique proprietary technological platform with this award,” said Dr. Anita Goel, M.D., PhD., Chairman and CEO of Nanobiosym. “This is our first defense contract and is a major step towards establishing the US government as one of our long-term customers.” Nanobiosym has been previously recognized by several other prominent awards, including multiple rounds of funding from the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Nanobiosym shares DTRA’s strategic mission to reduce the threat of biological warfare and bioterrorism and during the course of the DTRA contract plans to validate the use of Nanobiosym’s proprietary technology platform for emerging biodefense applications. “In the coming years, we envision a significant paradigm shift in healthcare where the ability to diagnose disease is taken out of a pathology lab and brought into doctor’s clinics, people’s homes, and even rural villages.” said Dr. Goel. “This is similar to the paradigm shift that occurred in the telecom industry when communications and computing devices became portable.” Nanobiosym is also actively adapting its Gene-RADAR® system to address unmet healthcare needs in the developing world, where the lack of basic infrastructure often precludes effective diagnostics.
About Nanobiosym (www.nanobiosym.com):
Nanobiosym Inc., a privately held Massachusetts firm, was founded in 2004 to develop technologies that integrate advances in physics, biomedicine, and nanotechnology. Nanobiosym Diagnostics, Inc. is the commercial partner of Nanobiosym that focuses on the commercialization of the proprietary Gene Radar® technology platform to empower people worldwide with rapid, accurate, and portable diagnostic information about their own health.
About Dr. Anita Goel
Dr. Anita Goel, Founder, Chairman, & CEO of Nanobiosym, is a Harvard-MIT trained Physicist and Physician who was named in 2005 as one of the world’s “Top 35 science and technology innovators under the age of 35” by MIT’s Technology Review Magazine. In 2006, Dr. Goel received the Global Indus Technovator Award from MIT, an honor recognizing the contributions of top 10 leaders working at the forefront of science, technology, and entrepreneurship. Dr. Goel earned a PhD in Physics from Harvard University, an MD from the Harvard-MIT Joint Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and BS in Physics from Stanford University.