MBio lands $5.2 million federal grant

BOULDER – MBio Diagnostics Inc. has received a $5.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue work on its flu test.

The five-year grant will be doled out in portions of about $1 million per year, said Michael Lochhead, vice president of the Boulder-based company. The company will use the money to figure out how to quickly reconfigure flu tests to respond to new or emerging infectious agents, Lochhead said in a statement.

“It’s a big one for us. It’s exciting,” Lochhead said of the grant, which came from NIH’s Partnerships for Biodefense program.

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The new test may be more accurate and quicker to return results than existing tests – two factors that the company says should be addressed following the H1N1 flu epidemic in 2009.

Clinical research will be done with viral disease partners at the University of California, San Diego, and at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, or PATH, in Seattle, the statement said.

MBio also develops other diagnostic tests, including ones for infectious diseases HIV and hepatitis. The company also has commercial partnerships “in the works,” Lochhead said.