The Department of Energy (DOE) has granted Sofie Biosciences with $1m, under the Phase II small business innovation research (SBIR) program.
The money will be used by the company to support the development of a microscale technology for rapid, easy synthesis of PET probes.
The company said presently centralized radiopharmacy model of PET probe production and distribution has a limited number of probes available from radiochemistry cores, as a result, the investigator is restricted to a handful of PET probes including [18F]FDG, [18F]NaF, [18F]FLT.
Sofie Biosciences president and CEO Patrick Phelps said, "It's an important step to further the development of a proprietary, game-changing technology that will provides researchers and clinicians with a first-generation device for the production of one-pot PET probes."
Sofie Biosciences technology development director Melissa Esterby said, "Winning this grant from DOE both supports and accelerates our efforts to bring radiochemistry-on-chip to market, a critical step in Sofie's vision of creating a transformative technology of an affordable, compact, easy-to-use system for the on-demand production of PET probes."
