$300K Funds Collaboration

By Doug Boyd

An ECU faculty member is among grant recipients who will share in $300,000 from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center as part of a program to foster university-industry collaboration.

Dr. Wayne Cascio, vice-chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences in the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, and Research Triangle Park-based startup Entegrion have received $100,000 to study the ability of freeze-dried platelets to help stop excessive bleeding during heart surgery or in patients taking anti-clotting drugs.

Their grant is part of the Biotech Center’s Collaborative Funding Grants program, which enable public-private teams to hire a postdoctoral researcher or technician to work at a North Carolina university under the supervision of an academic scientist on a topic of defined commercial interest.

The grant program is cosponsored by the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at North Carolina State University.

A researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Parion Sciences received a grant to study drugs to treat dry eye, and a researcher at NCSU and Agile Sciences received a grant to help create a treatment for bacterial spot disease on peaches.

The Biotechnology Center is a private, non-profit corporation supported by the N.C. General Assembly. Its mission is to provide long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business, education and strategic policy statewide.