Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Mass. Life Sciences Center awards $2M in matching grants

By Michelle Lang

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center doled out $2 million total in grants to four companies – Advantagene Inc., Hepregen Inc., Immunetics Inc. and Reflectance Medical Inc. – as part of its Small Business Matching Grant Program.

The program awarded $500,000 from the life sciences center to each of the recipients, matching federal small business grants previously awarded to the companies.

The four grants are part of the second round of Small Business Matching Grants; The first round awarded $1.5 million in grants to three companies in May 2010. The program, created under the Life Sciences Act of 2008, requires that qualifying companies must adhere to the U.S. Small Business Administration definition of a small business, and they must have taken in either Phase 2 or Post-Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer grants from federal agencies.

Newton-based Advantagene is developing ProstAtak as a prostate cancer treatment, and last week said that it reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a Special Protocol Assessment for a Phase 3 clinical trial of ProstAtak. 

Hepregen, located in Medford, makes and commercializes HepatoPac as a micro-liver drug discovery platform. Its goal is to reduce the liver toxicity caused by approved drugs.

Boston-based Immunetics develops tests for infectious diseases and pathogens, included tests approved by the FDA for Lyme disease and anthrax. Earlier this month it won a three-year, $2.4 million Phase 2 SBIR grant that will aid the Boston company in bringing its confirmatory test for Chagas’ disease, a potentially fatal parasitic infection, to clinical trials.

Westborough physiological sensor company Reflectance Medical develops its CareGuide platform to help doctors, patients, and healthcare workers to determine a patient’s metabolic status.