News

Mirari Biosciences Awarded SBIR Grant from National Institutes of Health to Apply MASCTM Technology To Drug Discovery

Rockville, MD - September 1, 2004 - Mirari Biosciences received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). The grant allows Mirari to apply its novel microwave-based chemistry and detection method Microwave-Accelerated Surface Chemistry^TM (MASC^TM) to the discovery and characterization of new drug candidates via the process of combinatorial chemistry. MASC^TM will be used to greatly accelerate the synthesis of diverse libraries of drug-like molecules on "chips" the size of a stick of gum. MASC^TM will then be used to sensitively and quickly observe the interactions of the chip molecules with proteins, such as those relevant to disease. These studies may lead to a rapid and easy means of synthesizing and evaluating the function of drug candidate libraries.