Project Grant W81XWH1010373

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) provides $275,000 to Dcan Biosciences LLC to develop an advanced microfluidic system for cancer diagnosis and monitoring. The system aims to isolate and assess circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and CTC clusters (CTCCs) from patient blood samples to enable highly sensitive and accurate liquid biopsies. Key objectives include designing a hybrid microfluidic device for...

The National Science Foundation awarded a $275,000 Project Grant to Oraliva, Inc. under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program to develop a portable, programmable single cell cytology platform for the early detection of epithelial cancers. The platform will combine microfluidics and artificial intelligence to classify potentially cancerous tissue in near real-time through multiparameter single-cell analysis and automated evaluation. The objectives are to link different clinical...

This $399,499 Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), under the Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research program (CFDA 93.394), supports the development of Liquid Biotech's TELOMESCAN circulating tumor cell (CTC) assay for monitoring non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients undergoing radiation and immunotherapy. The key products and services to be delivered through this funding include: 1) Developing a clinical prototype of the TELOMESCAN assay with automated analysis to...

The National Cancer Institute awarded The Leland Stanford Junior University $163,999 on September 1, 2026, under the Cancer Research Manpower program (CFDA 93.398) to develop cost-effective, user-friendly, and high-throughput microfluidic organ-on-a-chip models that recreate the human bone marrow and bone microenvironments to study breast cancer metastasis to bone. The research will investigate how bone-forming osteoblasts and bone endothelial cells facilitate the extravasation and early...

The National Cancer Institute awarded Vivid Bioinnovations, PBC $306,872 on August 7, 2026, under the Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research program (CFDA 93.394) to develop CAGES (Cell Assemblies in Gel Enclosures), an ultrahigh-throughput platform for screening chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies. The platform encapsulates millions of defined CAR-T and cancer cell interactions in biocompatible gel shells, enabling parallel assay of multi-day co-cultures with direct...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) awarded a $449,996.00 Project Grant to the Regents of the University of Minnesota, Office of Sponsored Projects Administration, to develop a highly sensitive, low-cost sensor platform to detect circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), a biomarker for early cancer diagnosis. This project, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cambridge, aims to combine microwave photonics (MWP) with polymer-based micro-ring resonator...

The National Cancer Institute awarded Rheotek Medical Inc. $1,045,569 under the Cancer Treatment Research program (CFDA 93.395) on September 1, 2026 for development of an ultra-precise needle delivery system for cutaneous cancer treatment. Rheotek Medical is developing the SoftTouch device, an automated intratumoral immunotherapy delivery system designed to address precision limitations in current manual injection methods for skin cancer. The device uses a miniaturized voice coil actuator to...

The National Cancer Institute awarded Senticell LLC $399,995 for a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project grant on September 1, 2026, to develop an red blood cell–based liquid biopsy platform for detecting circulating tumor DNA in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. The recipient will establish the biological and clinical performance of RBC-bound tumor DNA detection using vertebrate animal models of KRAS- and EGFR-driven lung cancer to characterize in vivo kinetics of...

The National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute awarded The Leland Stanford Junior University $638,972 on August 1, 2026, under the Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research program (CFDA 93.394) to develop an integrated liquid biopsy framework for noninvasive characterization of peripheral T-cell lymphomas. The funded research integrates circulating cell-free DNA and cell-free RNA analysis to detect minimal residual disease, monitor disease dynamics, improve disease classification,...

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded Biochip Labs Inc. $321,229 on September 15, 2025, under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837) to manufacture and analytically validate the Microfluidic Impedance Red Cell Assay (MIRCA) for commercial viability. This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I/II Fast-Track award funds scaling up manufacturing of the microfluidic biochip component with appropriate specifications and tight tolerances under regulated...