OyaGen News
Biotech Awarded Drug Discovery Grant
Greg Johnston – WOKR Channel 13 News
September 24, 2010
A Rochester area bio-technology company received a $500,000 grant to further drug discovery.
The money was given to OyaGen by the New York State Common Retirement Fund and Trillium Group. The money allows the team to continue developing treatments for viral diseases such as HIV, AIDS, and some forms of cancer.
OyaGen plans to purchase new equipment including a second robot that will communicate with the existing one to accurately screen thousands of compounds 24 hours a day.
“It also gives us a better focus that maybe someday, once we have worked on the HIV problem and have compounds going through clinical trials, that we can begin to look at other aspects of the platform and address urgent issues in cancer, hepatitis, and a variety of other things like that,” said Harold Smith, OyaGen founder and professor at the University of Rochester.
The state has invested more than $1 million in OyaGen since 2006. The biotechnology group was founded in 2003.