UW Startup Vie Diagnostics Receives Prestigious Grant from the National Science Foundation
Company continues to develop innovative single-use point-of-care diagnostic test for infectious diseases
SEATTLE – August, 10, 2016 – Vie Diagnostics (VieDx), a company spun out of the University of Washington with CoMotion, has just been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The highly competitive grant is a phase I funding step that can potentially lead to phase II funding of up to $1.5M.
“The NSF grant is a reflection of all the progress we have made as a company so far,” says Charlie Corredor, the co-founder of VieDx and a Commercialization Fellow at CoMotion. “And it’s going to keep us moving forward.”
Vie Dx was founded by a group of UW engineers and clinicians with the goal to make testing for infectious diseases faster and more accurate in order to improve clinical diagnosis and treatment. They are in the midst of developing a highly sensitive, single-use point-of-care diagnostic platform that can provide accurate results for infectious disease testing in as little ten minutes.
Their first product is a test for chlamydia, the most common sexually transmitted disease. According to the World Health Organization, chlamydia infects more than 130 million new people each year worldwide. However, no point-of-care test is currently available. In the US alone, there is a need for 30 million chlamydia tests each year, and all current testing requires central laboratory services that take days or even weeks to return results. The technology that the Vie Dx team is developing will allow for patients to be tested and treated in a single visit, improving overall patient care.
The NSF grant will help the company as it moves from R&D to clinical testing. “It’s exciting,” says Mark Borysiak, a co-founder of Vie DX in addition to being a PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. “We’re confident that we’ll meet the conditions to get the second phase of funding.”
About Vie Diagnostics:
Vie Dx (formerly SoroS) is a UW-based startup committed to developing clinical diagnostics that will improve patient care, reduce physician resource strain, and save money for taxpayers. The team is made up of former and current UW PhD students, Charlie Corredor and Mark Borysiak, as well as UW McMinn Endowed Associate Professor Jonathan Posner from Mechanical Engineering and UW Vice Chair of Family Medicine, Matthew Thompson. Their disruptive
diagnostic technology will allow patients to be tested and treated for sexually transmitted infections in a single visit, reducing healthcare cost and increasing patient satisfaction.
About the University of Washington and CoMotion:
Recently ranked by Reuters as the #1 most innovative public university in the world, UW is a leading recipient of federal funding research, producing innovations that have the power to change the world—from biofuel alternatives, to more effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and brain cancer, to purification technology for drinking water in the developing world. CoMotion at the UW is the collaborative innovation hub to expand the societal impact of the UW community by developing and connecting local and global innovation ecosystems. We deliver the tools and connections UW researchers and students need to accelerate the impact of their innovations.
Contact:
Donna O’Neill
Marketing and Communications CoMotion at University of Washington p: 206.685.9972
f: 206.543.0586
e: [email protected]
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