Caprion gets $12.9M contract from NIAID

Canadian firm Caprion Proteomics has been awarded a $12.9 million contract by the USA's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health, to carry out biodefense research in the area of infectious disease biomarkers.

Under the contract to be performed over a five-year period, Caprion will act as one of two NIAID Clinical Proteomics Centers for Infectious Disease & Biodefense, and will employ its CellCarta quantitative protein profiling technologies to perform several large-scale applied proteomics projects using human clinical samples from patients with infectious diseases. The projects will be aimed at the discovery, qualification and verification of candidate biomarkers with potential for clinical use to improve detection and diagnosis and to monitor therapeutic and vaccine responses and susceptibility to infection for diseases caused by various pathogens.

This second major Biodefense research contract awarded to Caprion by the NIAID builds on the expertise and results demonstrated by the firm as part of an initial contract awarded in 2004 and still in progress, it says.