A Medical Device Daily

LightWorks Optics (Tustin, California), an optics company that designs, develops, and manufactures advanced optics systems for biomedical companies, said that it has been awarded a $349,861 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Grant (SBIR) from the Department of Health and Human Services of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop technology that integrates pulsed laser microbeam irradiation and polymer microdevices for single cell selection, isolation, and expansion.

This technology will be designed for use by biomedical researchers as well as the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The program is funded under the SBIR "Lab to Marketplace" program.

In other grant news, 18 Stanford University School of Medicine (Stanford, California) projects that had been stalled by budget shortfalls at the National Institutes of Health are moving forward now, thanks to $6.9 million in federal economic stimulus funding.

Eleven of the newly funded projects had been peer-reviewed and approved but hadn't yet received money. Another six involved supplemental grants to existing projects. And in one case, the NIH awarded $500,000 to a researcher to buy two photon microscopes that will be shared with other laboratories.

These projects are the first at the medical school to receive support under the national stimulus plan, with additional grants expected down the road, officials said.