The grant is from the National Cancer Institute, an arm of the National Institutes of Health. It will fund research, development and testing of the 3-D technology.
The goal of the USCT system, not yet approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is to provide detailed information about the anatomy and tissue properties of the breast in ways not previously possible. Technical improvements to an existing prototype should be complete by early 2007, the company said, after which pre-clinical testing will begin at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The majority of the NIH grant, or $2.6 million, will pay for that testing.
TechniScan, a private company, is a byproduct of the University of Utah's department of bioengineering. The company also has received funding from the Governor's Office of Economic Development Centers for Excellence Program. Without such support, promising technologies such as the USCT system might not be commercialized, said TechniScan CEO David Robinson.
The NIH grant, he said, is especially noteworthy:
* The size of the award is 3.5 times larger than the typical NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant.
* The budget for research innovation grants has been depleted, and just one in nine proposals is funded.
* The NIH rarely funds pre-clinical trials.
Take all of those factors together, and you can see why it is a big deal for a Utah company to receive such an award, Robinson said.
"I feel like getting on top of my building and screaming at people," he said.
