A Medical Device Daily

The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH; both Bethesda, Maryland), said it would provide nearly $18 million for 11 High-End Instrumentation (HEI) grants that will fund the purchase of equipment designed to advance biomedical research.

Awarded to research institutions around the country, the one-time grants support the acquisition of instruments that cost more than $750,000, with a maximum of $2 million each.

Instruments in this price range include structural and functional imaging systems, macromolecular nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, high-resolution mass spectrometers, electron microscopes and supercomputers.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers allow researchers to determine 3-D structures of large proteins and protein complexes, while mass spectrometers provide very high resolution and accurate molecular-weight measurement for the study of large biopolymers and their interactions. Electron microscopes offer high-resolution imaging of single molecules and allow investigators to perform computer reconstruction at the subnanometer scale for large and complex macromolecular assemblies. Super computers with high-performance visualization hardware and parallel architectures allow for large data storage and high-speed transfer.

“Rapid technological development has led to a new generation of high-sensitivity, high-resolution instruments that are very expensive but that can greatly accelerate research into the underlying mechanisms of disease,” said Barbara Alving, MD, acting director of NCRR. “The faster we can place these new technologies in the hands of as many NIH investigators as possible, the more rapidly we can transfer this new knowledge to patient treatments and cures.”

FY05 High-End Instrumentation Grants were given to Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona); Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor, New York); Kennedy Krieger Institute (Baltimore); the University of California, San Diego; the University of Cincinnati; the University of Maryland (Baltimore); the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the University of Southern California (Los Angeles); the University of Virginia (Charlottesville) and Washington University (St. Louis).

In other grants/contracts news:

• vasamed (Minneapolis), which focuses on non-invasive, hemodynamic assessment technology, and Unetixs Vascular (Quonset, Rhode Island), a developer of vascular diagnostic testing equipment, have entered into an agreement under which Unetixs will provide U.S. distribution for vasamed’s SensiLas Microvascular Assessment System, a non-invasive system used to assess diabetic foot ulcers.

Terry Duesterhoeft, vice president, sales and marketing at vasamed, said, “Unetixs Vascular has a solid reputation as a provider of testing equipment for early detection of peripheral arterial disease, a build-up of plaque through the arteries, which can ultimately lead to strokes and heart attacks. They . . . have the ability to expand our reach to customers who are seeking to provide a full-range of diagnostic services to their patients.”

“Our strategic relationship with vasamed positions us to include microvascular assessment, specifically applied to wound care diagnostics to our . . . vascular testing product portfolio,” said Peter Moscovita, president and CEO of Unetixs.

vasamed products can be used by office-based physicians to determine if heart and blood vessels are healthy. Its products include SensiLase Microvascular Assessment System to monitor small blood vessel health, AcQtrac Impedance Cardiography to monitor heart function and Tissue Carbon Dioxide Technologies to monitor tissue wellness.