Vivosphere LLC

Vivosphere LLC, a woman-owned, minority-owned, Asian-Pacific American-owned small business based in Auburn, Alabama, operates as a federal grant recipient developing tissue-engineered three-dimensional cancer models for high-throughput drug screening and oncology research. The company holds no federal contracts and competes exclusively through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant programs.

Vivosphere's core capability centers on vivospheres — cell-laden hydrogel microspheres produced via a patented microfluidic encapsulation platform that create physiologically relevant, high-throughput-adaptable three-dimensional disease models for cancer drug discovery and validation. The platform offers superior control over tumor microenvironment, improved consistency in tissue size and shape relative to self-aggregation systems, and support for co-encapsulation of multiple cell types including stromal components, with applications extending to non-aggregating cell types and patient-derived xenograft models.

Federal funding has reached three agencies across three awards totaling $975 thousand in recent activity. The National Cancer Institute awarded Vivosphere a $350 thousand Project Grant (CFDA 93.394) under the Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research program on August 1, 2026, with a twelve-month performance period running through July 31, 2027, focused on developing colorectal cancer-specific vivosphere models and optimizing high-throughput screening assays against in vivo xenograft benchmarks. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) funded a $350 thousand Project Grant (CFDA 93.350) beginning May 22, 2024, to establish vivosphere consistency for high-throughput screening and expand compatible cell types. The National Science Foundation awarded $275 thousand under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships STTR Phase I program (CFDA 47.084) on May 1, 2025, to develop the tissue-engineered platform as a more physiologically relevant drug screening model with improved preclinical-to-clinical translation rates. One award (the NCI grant) completes within the next twenty-four months and faces recompete risk in that window.