Biomarker Discovery Company, Antigen Discovery Inc., Awarded an NIH Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Grant to Develop a Pan-HIV Protein Microarray Chip

IRVINE, Calif., Oct 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Antigen Discovery Inc. (ADi), a privately held company in Irvine, California, announced the receipt of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award (SBIR) from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). The one-year $225,000 award will fund the development of a Pan-HIV Protein Microarray Chip, which will contain every protein in all of the HIV-1 and HIV-2 subtypes and aid in the development of safe and effective vaccines and therapies to prevent HIV infection.

Dr. Xiaowu Liang, President and CEO stated, "ADi is grateful and excited about this SBIR award from the NIDCR. We are pleased to have the opportunity to apply our core platform technology to the development of a Pan-HIV Protein Microarray Chip."

"The chip will allow rapid characterization of the humoral immune response to all HIV infections and HIV vaccination regimens to identify antibodies against broadly neutralizing epitopes, to provide a useful and much needed tool to aid the development of a safe and effective vaccine to prevent or treat HIV infection and the subsequent progression to AIDS," added Dr. Douglas Molina, Director of Proteomics at ADi.   

"The development of safe and effective vaccine and therapeutics to prevent HIV-1 infection or the subsequent development of AIDS is of the utmost importance," added Dr. David Camerini, the principle investigator of the grant.  "The effort, however, has been hampered by a lack of understanding of the correlates of protective immunity and a lack of the tools needed to measure effective anti-HIV-1 immune responses. The current version of the multi clade HIV-1 (MC-HIV-1) chip, which is available commercially from ADi, contains HIV-1 proteins, protein fragments and epitopes from clades A1, A2, B, C and D. These five clades comprise 74% of HIV-1 infections worldwide. With support of this SBIR award, we will improve the MC-HIV-1 chip by expanding its coverage to >91% HIV-1 infections and virtually all HIV-2 infections globally thereby creating a Pan-HIV Proteomic Chip."

About Antigen Discovery, Inc.
Antigen Discovery, Inc. uses and commercializes its innovative proteome microarray platform technology, testing models and advanced analytical techniques to facilitate the development of new diagnostic tests, therapeutics and vaccines for infectious disease, autoimmunity, cancer and more. Please visit http://www.antigendiscovery.com for more information.

Contact:
Angela Yee
Antigen Discovery, Inc.
Tel: +1 (949) 679-4068
[email protected]

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SOURCE Antigen Discovery Inc.

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