NCI awards contract to PACT & Health of Branford, CT, USA

An integrated platform to screen anti-cancer drugs using high-throughput clonogenic assay will be designed

PACT & Health of Branford, CT, USA has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Contract by National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the development of I-PARTS Integrated Platform for Anti-Cancer Radiation Therapeutics Screening. This is to design and establish an integrated platform to screen anti-cancer drugs using high-throughput clonogenic assay System (HTS).

NCI, an institute of National Institute of Health (NIH) leads and supports cancer research across the US to advance scientific knowledge and help people to live longer and healthier. The SBIR is one of NCI’s engines of innovation for developing and commercialising novel technologies in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In addition to funding, NCI contributes tremendously to mentoring and networking for small businesses with next-generation cancer technologies.

Dr Rao VL Papineni, CEO, PACT & Health, and Principal Investigator of the project points that I-PARTS, Integrated platform for anti-cancer radiation therapeutics screening combines the recent advances in cell culture automation, microfluidics, and high-speed image analysis with the high-thoughput X-ray irradiation.

The grantee PACT & Health at Precision X-Ray Unit partners with Co-PI Dr Sylvain Costes at NASA-Ames in this pivotal project. Commercially, I-PARTS, an integrated instrument is designed and developed to discover new cancer drugs required for combined cancer therapy. This instrument and the technology is miniaturised such that cancer drugs and radiation treatment can be tailored for individual patient, the ongoing goal towards personalised medicine.