Fort Collins company receives grant for skin decontamination product

FORT COLLINS — Armis Biopharma Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Fort Collins, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to support development of a product for skin decontamination after exposure to warfare agents.

The grant of $423,048 is the first phase of a $2.1 million grant. The project supports the development of Veriox DECON, a proprietary formulation to provide first responders working on mass-casualty decontamination an effective, cost-efficient, FDA-approved, fast-acting, field-deployable skin decontamination kit.

With the increasing threat of terrorism, the development of countermeasures for the event of a chemical attack on civilians has become a high priority. Mass casualty events in which chemical warfare agents would be employed in an attack on a civilian population are a concrete risk. Because of differences between the military and civilian populations, existing countermeasures may need to be adapted or expanded for use with a civilian population.

“Veriox DECON offers several advantages over existing decontamination products for mass casualty settings because it can be rapidly dispensed with standard liquid dispensing systems that will allow first responders to quickly decontaminate multiple individuals,” Ted Ziemann, chairman and CEO of Armis Biopharma, said in a press release. “Veriox DECON is also environmentally safe in that it breaks down rapidly into harmless products and demonstrates a better safety and toxicity profile than competitive products.”

Although this project focuses on nerve agent decontamination, Veriox is also an effective antimicrobial agent, having shown efficacy against drug resistant pathogens. The focus of the present grant is to demonstrate product safety on mammals. Work on the project has already begun with initial results expected in 2021.

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