Thursday, July 31, 2008

ECI lands $949K NIAID grant for infection detection

By Mass High Tech Staff

ECI Biotech Inc. has won a Phase 2 grant worth $949,000 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to commercialize the Worcester-based company’s rapid diagnostic that detects harmful bacteria that cause wound infections.

According to company officials, ECI’s first product will be a diagnostic that will help doctors determine if a wound is infected. One of the main reasons chronic wounds do not heal is because they are infected, and doctors currently use subjective methods such as swelling, redness, odor, and temperature to diagnose infections.

ECI founder and executive vice president Mitchell C. Sanders said the company’s ExpressDetect diagnostics will give a result in minutes, unlike current methods involving swabs and biopsy samples that can take two to three days to get results.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the organizations under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health.

In April of 2007, ECI received an $800,000, low-interest loan from the Emerging Technology Fund of MassDevelopment Corp., Massachusett’s finance and development authority, for the company to purchase equipment it needed to manufacture its protein-based diagnostic system. The loan was part of ECI’s $3.8 million plan to retrofit its offices at 85 Prescott St. in Worcester to accommodate development and manufacturing of its wound diagnostics.