Trevigen Inc. Awarded Prestigious Grant to Bring CometChip™ to Market

April 24, 2014 - Gaithersburg, MD - Trevigen Inc., a company specializing in the development and delivery of innovative technologies and systems for the study of cancer, drug development and toxicology, in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), has recently been awarded a $1,500,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to develop and commercialize the CometChip™ technology — licensed from MIT and pioneered by the Engelward laboratory.

As a pioneer in commercializing the only complete and standardized system employing the comet TUNEL assay for the detection of DNA damage in single cells, Trevigen and its collaborators have developed a spatially encoded microwell system, which through preliminary tests shows to enable a 3,000 percent increase in throughput, with heightened accuracy. With the additional funding, Trevigen will meet the needs of basic researchers, epidemiologists, clinicians and researchers in the pharmaceutical industry, by developing a multi-purpose high throughput platform and software for quantifying DNA damage and repair in human cells.

"We are honored to receive more than $1,818,784 of SBIR funds awarded for this TUNEL assay project, including the Phase I Award from 2011," said Principal Investigator, Dr. Jay George. "Knowledge about DNA damage and repair is relevant to cancer prevention, susceptibility and treatment, with applications in drug development, clinical assay development and genotoxocity testing."

For more information, visit www.trevigen.com.

About Trevigen, Inc.:
Trevigen, Inc. is a rapidly growing biotechnology company focused on the development of products and technology for cancer research, emphasizing apoptosis, DNA damage and repair, and cancer cell function and behavior. The company is located in the I-270 "High Technology Corridor" in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Trevigen-brand research products are marketed via the Internet, catalog, journal advertising, direct mail and telemarketing, giving Trevigen worldwide recognition among those in the area of cancer research. Distributor appointments have been made in the Americas, Europe and the Pacific Rim. Trevigen also has in place supply agreements with major government and university medical research centers, in order to make them a part of the growing areas of government research and pharmaceutical research.

The company is the recipient of several SBIR grants from the National Institutes of Health, concerning technology development for the analysis of DNA damage.