WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Boston Biomedica, Inc. (Nasdaq: BBII) announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, BBI BioSeq, has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant in support of its development efforts in its novel, enabling technology called Pressure Cycling Technology (PCT).
The grant is a six month Phase I award by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to further develop PCT for pathogen inactivation in human plasma, while concomitantly retaining plasma's therapeutic properties. PCT involves subjecting plasma to pulses of low and high pressures, generally at low temperatures. Preliminary results indicate PCT inactivates many harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus, as well as enveloped viruses such as HIV and HSV, while retaining high levels of most significant therapeutic plasma proteins, including Factor VIII, essential for blood clotting. In addition, other experiments indicate some inactivation of Parvovirus, suggesting this process may offer a possible solution to the ongoing concern of the persistence in the plasma supply of extremely stable, non-enveloped, human pathogenic viruses.
"Experiments proposed here will help determine the optimal conditions of temperature, pressure, pulsation pattern and time for the inactivation of a variety of hard-to-kill viruses while retaining the stability of a broad range of therapeutic plasma proteins", stated Robert Hess, Ph.D, Director of PCT Research at BBI BioSeq and Principal Investigator of the grant. "Our goal is to provide the plasma industry with a technology that is safe, rapid, inexpensive, highly effective, gentle on proteins, broad in specificity, and one that requires no chemical additives or extractions".
Mr. Richard T. Schumacher, CEO, Chairman and Founder of BBI said: "We are very pleased that the NIH has approved this award. This SBIR grant represents our continued commitment to addressing technological advances in pathogen inactivation in plasma. Approximately 35 million whole blood donations occur in North America, Western Europe and Japan annually, of which about 28 million units of the resulting plasma could benefit from this technology. With 30%- 40% of the US population receiving blood or blood products at some time during their lifetime, we must continue to strive to improve the safety of our blood and plasma supply".
Boston Biomedica, Inc. is an infectious diseases management company providing products and services for the detection and treatment of infectious diseases (ID) such as AIDS, Lyme Disease, and Viral Hepatitis. The Company has four business units: (1) BBI Diagnostics, an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer and seller of quality control and other diagnostic products used to increase the accuracy of in-vitro diagnostic tests, (2) BBI Clinical Laboratories, a leading specialty infectious diseases testing laboratory, (3) BBI Biotech Research Laboratories, providing R&D support for the other BBI business units as well as contract research services for third parties, and (4) BBI Source Scientific, an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer of laboratory and diagnostic instrumentation. In addition, the Company is pursuing research and development programs in the potentially explosive areas of pressure cycling technology (PCT) and drug discovery, with the goal of introducing new solutions for the detection and treatment of infectious diseases.
Statements contained in this news release that state the Company's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are ``forward-looking'' statements. It is important to note that the Company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from those projected include the possibility that due to unforeseen technical and other difficulties Boston Biomedica may not be able to develop pressure cycling technology (PCT) into commercially successful products, or such development may take longer than currently expected. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained from time to time in the Company's SEC filings, including but not limited to the Company's report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998 and on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 1999. Copies of this document may be obtained by contacting the Company or the SEC.
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SOURCE Boston Biomedica, Inc.
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CONTACT: Richard T. Schumacher, CEO & Chairman, or William R. Prather, M.D., Sr. VP Finance & Business Dvlp., both of Boston Biomedica, Inc., 508-580-1900
