The National Institutes of Health Award a $2 Million Grant to Firefly Bioworks, INC

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Firefly Bioworks, a leading manufacturer of universal multiplex assays has announced on Friday, August 5, 2011, that it has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Health to further the company’s research, development, and manufacturing of diagnostic RNA profiling in the treatment of cancer. The grant is phase II in a funding project that the National Institutes of Health has been involved in together with the National Cancer Institute for the development of micro RNA profiling.

The mission of Firefly Bioworks is to develop instruments and universal multiplex assays to treat many genetic based diseases or genetic mutant diseases, such as cancer and related diseases. The company plans to fully unlock the diagnostic power that is in the existing technology in cancer diagnostic procedures in clinical settings.

Firefly has a unique technology which was born in the laboratory of Professor Doyle at MIT. The technology basically works by using barcoded micro-gels that are rapidly synthesized by using a revolutionary mixture of micro fluids and photolithography. This allows for biological encoding and diagnostic testing in one swath, thus streamlining the entire diagnostic process allowing for a quicker way of finding out what the proper treatment would be in a given case.

According Prof. Patrick Doyle, his team is very excited with the results that the phase I of the research and development of the technology, which he himself pioneered in his laboratory at MIT.

Adding to what Prof. Doyle stated, the company’s cofounder, Dr. Daniel Pregibon, upon the exciting results of phase I, the mission now is to use those positive results to put the new diagnostic system to work. Dr. Pregibon further looks forward to continue the research together with the academic team led by Prof. Doyle at MIT and ensure a reliable diagnostic detection system that can promise early detection of even the fastest of metastatic cancers.

Firefly’s CEO, David Marini further added that both him and the team at Firefly are extremely grateful of the small business development that the National Cancer Society has in place to fund groundbreaking research in this much needed field of medicine. Cancer is one disease that kills a good majority of Americans and one of the many reasons why cancer is such a lethal disease is because it is detected too late in most cases.

Firefly Bioworks is dedicated to create more effective assays in the field of early cancer diagnostics to help in the fight against cancer.