InteliSpark client Shasqi, Inc. has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant worth $749,906. The grant is for the SBIR project “Biomaterials and Chemistry to Enhance the Delivery of Medicines in the Body.” Shasqi, Inc. is a company that has created a new technology to deliver drugs to specific areas in the body.
The goal of the SBIR project is to improve a new technology to deliver medicine to specific parts of the body. Local medical problems are issues that affect only one specific part of the body such as your knee. These issues are regularly treated with medicines that spread throughout the entire body and only a small portion actually reaches where it needs to. A medication that reaches its intended target would be ideal. Unfortunately, the majority of medications in the market are not ideal.
Under the SBIR project, Shasqi, Inc. is working on a drug delivery technology allowing implantable material to mark a particular spot of the body where a procedure was done. The drug lasts for a few weeks and allows for the medication a patient is taking to concentrate and activate at the specific area of the body where the drug was implanted instead of all over the body.
The project will determine the Shasqi, Inc. ability to release different drug payloads in vitro and in vivo. These advances will improve drug approval rates, reduce the cost of drug development and bring medicine closer to the ideal medication for local medical problems.