Tymora Analytical Operations receives $150,000 NIH grant
September 5, 2012
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A life-sciences company based in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette has received a grant that could strengthen its technology platform to help biologists and cancer researchers analyze protein samples.
Tymora Analytical Operations LLC; has received a $150,000 SBIR Phase I grant from the National Institutes of Health. Anton Iliuk, president and chief technology officer, said the award will be used to develop an application for the company's pIMAGO platform. The application would allow researchers to detect multiple changes to a protein sample from a single experiment.
"Biologists and cancer researchers could use the platform to detect phosphorylation, which is the addition of a phosphate group to a protein, and other changes from a single experiment," he said. "By detecting multiple outputs from a single experiment, the application would save time for the researcher and lead to more reliable data. It also could be more cost-effective because researchers can screen for modifications without needing to purchase dozens of different materials."
Iliuk said Tymora Analytical Operations' platforms could be branched out into different applications, and the NIH grant may lead to the first set of products that feature pIMAGO.
"Another system on the market allows for similar modification detections, but it is radioactivity-based. Institutions and organizations that use it must be certified by the government because of the potential health effects, and thus must be regulated," he said.
Tymora Analytical Operations has received funding from multiple sources to develop commercialized products, including an SBIR Phase I grant from the National Science Foundation, Purdue's Emerging Innovations Fund and business plan competitions, including the Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition. Iliuk said the support from these sources and the NIH strengthens the company's outlook.
"My colleagues and I believe that if the program directors of the NIH, NSF and other organizations see the value in our potential product, it validates our belief that it has merit and could be useful to researchers in the U.S. and around the world," he said. "The funding will keep us moving forward to develop further applications of our technology."
About Tymora Analytical Operations LLC
Tymora Analytical Operations was established in 2010 to provide new nanotechnology-based products to serve the R&D market in the life sciences. Tymora has developed a nanoscale platform technology - with PolyMAC and pIMAGO as the lead products - for unmet needs in analysis of protein phosphorylation that relates to the onset of numerous diseases, most notably cancer.
About Purdue Research Park
The Purdue Research Park, with four locations across Indiana, has the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country. The park network is home to about 200 companies that employ 4,000 people and are located in West Lafayette, Indianapolis, Merrillville and New Albany.
Purdue Research Park contact: Steve Martin, 765-588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org
Sources: Anton Iliuk, 765-490-6834, anton.iliuk@tymora-analytical.com
