ROCHESTER, NY: Adarza BioSystems, Inc. has been awarded a $245,912 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to aid the company in its efforts to apply its breakthrough Arrayed Imaging Reflectometry (AIRTM) bioassay platform for the detection of environmental toxins in a small quantity of blood. The SBIR program is a highly competitive program that encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIR enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. “Adarza BioSystems’ award is a strong indication of the potential seen by the NIEHS for Adarza’s AIRTM platform to benefit researchers in the environmental exposure field by measuring the levels of several specific toxins simultaneously in the blood of study participants,” says Dr. Benjamin Miller, founder and head of Adarza’s Scientific Advisory Board.
There is considerable interest in the exposure science field in screening approaches to studying human environmental exposures, where toxicants of interest are profiled across various subpopulations through blood and/or other biological samples to look for exposure patterns. Such studies would complement traditional exposure studies where the environment in which an individual lives is sampled to identify potential causes of disease. This new award will enable Adarza to develop highly multiplex sensors to facilitate not only the detection of environmental toxicants in serum samples, but to simultaneous measure other health markers that are affected by toxic exposures. Through a previously funded NIEHS project, Adarza built a portable, multiplex protein detection system to profile biological response to toxic exposures from a finger-stick volume of blood. By measuring the levels of cytokines and other protein biomarkers, health status information related to inflammation, oxidative stress, and coagulation can be quickly assessed in the field using this tool, without the need for centralized laboratory facilities. The current funding will demonstrate the direct detection of 5 environmental toxins on the AIRTM platform for the first time, for potential integration onto existing sensors.
Adarza’s AIRTM bioassay platform is in the development stage as an investigational device and is not available for sale in the United States. The company is in the process of validating its bioassay platform, and intends to have devices available for the research market within the next few years.
About Adarza BioSystems, Inc. Adarza is an early stage biosensor technology product and service company headquartered in Rochester, New York. Founded in 2008, Adarza’s biosensor products and assay services will first be available to academic and clinical researchers.
Adarza’s products and services utilize its proprietary Arrayed Imaging Reflectometry (AIRTM) detection platform that is capable of rapidly identifying and quantifying a series of biological target analyte species in a fluid sample, without chemical labels or complex assays. The AIRTM technology offers key performance benefits in sensitivity, speed, multiplex arrays, sample size, dynamic range, ease of use and industry leading low cost of use. Adarza products address broad quantitative analyte detection applications, including cancer, drug and vaccine development, allergy, immunology and infectious diseases research. Adarza also sells plans to sell biosensor devices for applications in surveillance and monitoring human exposure to harmful agents in public health, industrial, environmental, defense and homeland security.