A Medical Device Daily

Wexford Science & Technology (Chicago) reported that its tenant in the Technology Business Center at the University Technology Park at IIT, Wrightwood Technologies (WTI; Chicago) has secured a $750,000, two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve a tool used for sorting, studying, and purifying natural components of incredibly complex mixtures produced both by nature and by man.

The two-year Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant is WTI's second from the NIH, and will allow the firm to adapt its proprietary technologies to existing chemical separation techniques, namely countercurrent chromatography (CCC) making this process dramatically easier and less costly.

Purified compounds isolated under this grant will be tested against the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium. Despite advances in treatment, TB remains a major cause of illness and death worldwide, with more than two million dying from the disease every year. The search for better treatments is ongoing and WTI will play an important technological role.