NHLBI awards pharmaceutical company $321,000 research grant

Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company that develops and commercializes precision diagnostics, was awarded a $321,000 Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant earlier this week from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

The research will be a collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, and its goal will be to examine the ability of Tc-99m-tilmanocept to localize in high-risk atherosclerotic plaques rich in CD206.

The study’s lead investigator, Steven Grinspoon, MD, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, director of the MGH program in nutritional metabolism and co-director of Harvard’s Nutrition Obesity Research Center.

“HIV infected patients suffer disproportionately from atherosclerosis and CVD,” Grinspoon said in a statement. “There exists a profound and highly significant unmet need for means to better diagnose and treat atherosclerosis in all patients but particularly so in HIV patients.”

One day later, Navidea was awarded a Fast Track SBIR grant for up to $1.7 million from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. That research will study Tc-99m-tilmanocept’s ability to identify skeletal joints inflamed as a result of rheumatoid arthritis.