NuGEN Technologies Inc has received a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). SBIR grants are designed to provide support for the research and development of new technologies and methodologies that have the potential to succeed as commercial products.

NuGEN will use the funds to support the further development of its SPIA and Ribo-SPIA technologies for high sensitivity gene expression applications. NuGEN's first product based on these technologies, the Ovation RNA amplification system, was launched in July 2003.

"Reliable gene amplification is critical to gene expression analysis and functional genomics, which enables researchers to investigate the relationship between gene expression and how cells or tissues develop and change in response to stimuli or disease," said Jan D'Alvise, President and CEO of NuGEN. "To expand the uses of gene expression analysis in both research and diagnostic applications, products are needed that can rapidly and reliably amplify both common and rare gene products in a sample, and can enable gene expression analysis in very small samples. SPIA and Ribo-SPIA provide the technology base for such products, and we are happy to receive this funding, and the scientific validation it implies from the NIH."

"Gene expression profiling can offer insight into the genes and cellular pathways that are active in normal and pathological states, as well as the discovery and validation of drug targets," said Nurith Kurn, Chief Scientific Officer of NuGEN. "This grant from the NIH will allow NuGEN to further develop our highly sensitive amplification methods and make them suitable for gene expression analysis of samples derived from very small numbers of cells or even single cells such as those derived from tissue biopsies, sorted cells and laser-capture microdissection. Thus, we will enable researchers to drastically reduce the amount of sample required for gene expression profiling, while preserving the fidelity required for meaningful analysis."