Blood tests are to become painless as Tasso gains a $2.9m grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as its small business innovation research contract is expanded.
Tasso, a US-based medical technology company that is working with University of Wisconsin-Madison, has raised $2.9m in grant funding.
Tasso has developed a device that draws blood painlessly from the skin using capillary action. Currently the device can draw approximately 0.15 cubic centimetres of blood from a patient, enough for cholesterol, infection, cancer cells and blood sugar tests.
The funding has come from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It has extended Tasso’s phase II small business innovation research contract.
Erwin Berthier, vice-president of Tasso, said, “This is a disruptive technology that will enable connecting anyone in the world – from home, rural areas, low resource locations, or war zones – to a centralised blood analysis laboratory, providing affordable cutting edge diagnostics to everyone.”
The funding will be used by Tasso in its work with US-based biotechnology GenTegra on a device to draw blood from a patient and stabilise the biomarkers at ambient temperatures.
Bruce Jamieson, chief executive of GenTegra, said: “GenTegra is pleased to be working with the innovative HemoLink device that Tasso is developing as an alternative to venipuncture blood collection. As a part of the HemoLink device our stabilisation chemistry, Matrix Chaperone, stabilises the blood in dry form for convenient shipping and any queue time at the clinical lab while waiting for diagnostic testing.”
