Maven Biotechnologies has been awarded $1.96m by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to support the commercialisation of its LFire imaging technology for label-free protein microarrays and cell-based assays.

The grant was awarded to Maven through the federal stimulus package initiative for Biomedical Research, Development, and Growth to Spur the Acceleration of New Technologies (BRDG-SPAN).

The target applications for the technology include immunoassays in the research and diagnostics markets, cell-based studies, high-throughput pharmaceuticals screening and the established label-free applications in biomolecular interaction analysis.

Maven chief technology officer David Ralin said that Maven welcomes the support of the NIH to bring the company’s platform to market. LFire’s label-free, multiplexed capabilities and inherent simplicity will directly benefit their customers, delivering better results in less time and with lower costs.

Maven chief engineering officer Jeffrey Chongsathien Cantab said that they look forward to create a robust, flexible and modular product portfolio of laboratory instrumentation and consumables, built on LFire.

“The initial instrument will be a desktop microplate reader, with a set of ‘alpha’ evaluation units expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2011 and made available for use by key academic collaborators and strategic industry partners,” Cantab said.