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Follow on Google News | The NIH Awards Aciont® a Small Business Catalyst Award Grant Accelerating Innovative ResearchAciont is awarded a phase I SBIR $214K grant for the project titled “Novel Method for the Ocular Iontophoretic Delivery of Avastin® and Lucentis®”
By: Aciont Inc The goal of the project is to develop a safe and effective ocular iontophoresis drug delivery system for high molecular weight drugs or macromolecules. Thus, project investigators believe this project has the potential to provide a non-invasive and patient-friendly drug delivery system to treat age related macular degeneration. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness above the age of 50. Lucentis® “This is a great testimonial to the technical strengths of Aciont and its ability to undertake such a challenging drug delivery approach for back of the eye diseases like AMD,” said Balbir Brar, Ph.D., D.V.M., Aciont’s Vice President of Research and Development. “The Aciont team should be commended for this national recognition by the NIH and I am personally very excited about this project,” Brar added. The grant has several specific aims including the pharmacokinetic, safety and efficacy assessment of the iontophoretic administration of macromolecular drugs to the eye in vivo. The project expands upon previous research on ocular iontophoresis conducted by S. Kevin Li, Sarah Molokhia and William I. Higuchi. Previous studies using a real time MRI pharmacokinetic methodology provided some evidence of the potential iontophoretic delivery of a surrogate macromolecule to the posterior section of an eye in rabbit. The successful execution of the project requires the combination of expertise from separate research departments at the University of Utah such as the John A. Moran Eye Center, Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Department of Radiology. The lead investigators of this new grant are William I Higuchi, Ph.D., Sarah Molokhia, Ph.D. and Kongnara Papapangkorn, Ph.D.. Additional contributors to the project from Utah faculty includes Paul S. Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D., Eun-Kee Jeong, Ph.D. and James N. Herron, Ph.D.. S. Kevin Li, Ph.D., from the University of Cincinnati also is a project contributor. According to the NIH, the Small Business Catalyst Award program is “further expected to support entrepreneurs of exceptional creativity, drawn from scientific and technological environments beyond NIH, who propose pioneering and possibly transformative approaches to addressing major biomedical or behavioral challenges with the potential for downstream commercial development. The Small Business Catalyst Award for Accelerating Innovative Research funding opportunity intends to encourage fresh research perspectives and approaches to serve the mission of NIH.” The specific project described above is supported by Award Number R43EY020791 from the National Eye Institute. More information about the project can be accessed from NIH’s website link at http://report.nih.gov/ Source: Aciont Inc. Contact John Higuchi, CEO Aciont, Inc. (801) 359-3461 admin@aciont.com # # # Aciont Inc. is a specialty biopharmaceutical company endeavoring to become the world leader in commercializing localized, non-invasive (topical passive diffusion-based and iontophoretic) End
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