A Diagnostics and Imaging Week

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, Maryland) reported the award of more than $12 million in grants for healthcare advancements.

The new grants will fund four investigators in developing: disposable microchips for the diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer, a bio-artificial kidney to eliminate dialysis procedures, insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes, and nanoparticles that selectively leave the blood and bind to cancer cells to assist in removal of brain tumors.

The overall goal of the NIBIB Quantum Grants program is to make advances in health care by funding research on targeted projects that will develop new technologies and modalities for the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease.

“We are excited to be awarding these Quantum Grants to four excellent researchers and their interdisciplinary teams,” said NIBIB director Roderic Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D. “We look forward to watching the extraordinary results that will be achieved as these studies progress. All four of these projects have the potential to significantly improve the current practice of medicine.”

The awards are as follows:

• Anthony Atala, MD, Wake Forest University Health Sciences received $3.2 million (3 years) for a study on insulin producing cells from amniotic stem cells for diabetes therapy.

• Raoul Kopelman, PhD, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor received $2.6 million (3 years) for a study on nanoparticle-enabled intraoperative imaging and therapy.

• Shuvo Roy, PhD, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine-CWRU received $3.2 million (3 years) for a study on a miniaturized implantable renal assist device for total renal replacement therapy.

• Mehmet Toner, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital received $3.4 million (3 years) for a study on point-of-care microfluidics in lung cancer.

In other grant news:

• TechniScan Medical Systems (TMS; Salt Lake City), a developer of ultrasound technology for breast imaging, reported receiving two new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program grants from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health totaling more than $267,000.

TMS also said it has been selected to participate in the National Institutes of Health Commercialization Assistance Program (NIH-CAP) to further develop the company’s UltraSound CT (USCT) Imaging System.

TMS will also receive about $1.7 million in Phase II of a previous NCI-SBIR grant in 2007 with another $900,000 to support clinical testing during 2008. TMS said that the new grants bring its total NIH funding to $3.5 million.

TechniScan said that its technology is intended to diagnose breast cancer in conjunction with traditional mammography by providing detailed information about the anatomy and tissue properties of the breast in ways not previously possible.

It said the NIH-SBIR grant funds will be used to develop the USCT System in preparation for investigational testing of patients at the University of California San Diego (La Jolla, California) and the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota). Testing is slated to begin early 2008.

• QualityMetric Health Outcomes Solutions (Lincoln, Rhode Island) has been awarded a SBIR grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH for $2 million to advance developments in patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures for adults with asthma.

QualityMetric will collaborate with the Center for Health Research of Kaiser Permanente and the Southern California Permanente Medical Group on the project.

QualityMetric said it will use the award to finalize development of the ASTHMA- CAT, which combines generic and disease-specific health outcomes measures to provide a patient-based assessment valid for routine monitoring of asthma impact, asthma control, and quality of life outcomes.

QualityMetric says that it applies psychometric methods and computerized adaptive testing technology to the assessment of patient-reported outcomes and is the developer of DYNHA system, allowing administration of computerized tests of both generic and disease-specific health concepts.

• Tiny new drugs that target cancer-causing genes and early warning systems that flag cancer’s recurrence are among the goals of a planned research center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, Massachusetts) that got a $100 million infusion this week.

David Koch, an MIT alumnus and prostate cancer survivor, has agreed to donate the money toward a $240 million center intended to bring together biologists and engineers to improve detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, MIT said. Half of the donation will go for construction costs and half will pay for research. The university is raising the rest of the money from other donors and through loans. The center is expected to open in 2010 on Main Street in the heart of the Cambridge campus.

According to university officials, the gift is the fifth largest to MIT.

MIT said its new building would house about 500 scientists and staff members and the laboratories of 25 professors, including biologist and Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp and chemical engineer Robert Langer, a 2006 winner of the National Medal of Science.

In contract news:

• St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minnesota) said it has been awarded a Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) contract with Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego).

The contract is a two-year award that began Oct. 1.

St. Jude began its CRM relationship with Premier in 2004 through pacemaker and implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) contract awards. The new contract will include the complete line of St. Jude’s CRM products, including the expanding line of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) products, the company said.

Premier serves 1,700 hospitals and more than 47,000 other healthcare sites.

St. Jude has five major focus areas that include: CRM, atrial fibrillation, cardiac surgery, cardiology and neuromodulation.

• Premier (San Diego) said it has given its 1,700 hospital members access in August to the Cobas Ampliprep TaqMan HIV-1 assay — the only real-time PCR test for HIV offered to its members — from diagnostic powerhouse Roche (Basel, Switzerland).

Premier said that the new HIV-1 monitoring test, Cobas TaqMan 48 Analyzer and Cobas TaqMan Analyzer to its existing three-year molecular contract so that customers could combine the Cobas Ampliprep, which was included in the existing molecular contract, with the Cobas TaqMan and the docking station to experience full automation.

Roche said it introduced the automated Cobas Ampliprep/Cobas TaqMan in response to the need for a system that enables molecular laboratory technicians to load samples and walk away, not returning until the sample results are ready.

“Molecular technicians are in high demand,” said Susan Zienowicz, VP for molecular diagnostics of Roche. “In creating the Cobas Ampliprep/Cobas TaqMan HIV-1 assay, we provide labs with another strategy to help them leverage their employees’ time and get more done in the lab.”

Premier serves 1,700 hospitals and more than 47,000 other healthcare sites.