Axcend Awarded a Phase II SBIR Grant from the National Institutes of Health

This Phase II SBIR Grant continues successful Phase I research by Axcend to develop a “Portable Liquid Chromatography Platform for Diverse Pharmaceutical Applications”

March 4, 2021 — Axcend® today announced that it has been awarded a Phase II SBIR Grant to continue its work in developing a “Portable Liquid Chromatography Platform for Diverse Pharmaceutical Applications.”

The two-year Phase II Small Business Innovation Research award was issued by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences within the National Institutes of Health. This new grant is the continuation of research and development successfully completed by Axcend under a Phase I SBIR grant issued for the same purpose.

Axcend’s continued R&D efforts will be to adapt the Axcend Focus LC® (the company’s innovative compact and hand-portable, capillary HPLC-UV system) to a number of relevant pharmaceutical applications.

Specific applications will include:

  • High-throughput screening for impurity identification of new chemical entities;
  • Real-time on-line reaction monitoring in batch and continuous processes ; and
  • HPLC development of separation and characterization of protein-based therapeutics, particularly antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).

The Axcend R&D work for this grant will be led by Milton L. Lee, Ph.D., its Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, a world-renowned scientist known for his efforts to advance the miniaturization and application of scientific instrumentation. Axcend will collaborate in the  R&D program with Prof. James P. Grinias at Rowan University, while several leading international pharmaceutical manufacturers are also included in the evaluation of the Axcend technology.

“We are grateful for the support of NIH and our partners at Rowan and in the pharmaceutical industry to realize the advantages of compact and portable high-performance liquid chromatography,” said Ray West, VP of Customer Success at Axcend. “We are excited to contribute to the development of new medicines. So in this regard, we are honored to receive this Phase II SBIR grant and look forward to successfully developing and commercializing compact HPLC for pharmaceutical applications. ”

Disclaimer:

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44GM137649. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About the Axcend Focus LC

The Axcend Focus LC is a shoebox-sized, hand-portable, UV-Absorption-based HPLC that breaks the mold for traditional high-performance liquid chromatography systems. Even if used around-the-clock, the Axcend Focus LC consumes under 10 mL of solvents per week and produces roughly the same amount of waste, making it extremely low cost to operate and one of the most environmentally friendly and Green HPLCs on the planet.

In addition, because of its small size, low weight and ability to operate on battery power, the Axcend Focus LC can be used virtually anywhere: on a lab bench, inside a fume hood or glove box, and even in-the-field. The award-winning design of the Axcend Focus LC also makes it easy to integrate with mass spectrometers and autosamplers.

About Axcend

Axcend is a provider of innovative, hand-portable and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) systems. These solutions allow scientists to deliver HPLC Anywhere® and provide dramatic improvements in portability, ease-of-operation, and rapid and convenient deployment, as well as coupling to other analytical systems.

Axcend, the Axcend logo, Axcend Focus LC, and HPLC Anywhere are trademarks of Axcend, LLC. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

 

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 CONTACT:  David Politis, +1-801-405-9545, [email protected]