Sometimes lab research can lead to a discovery that is commercially viable to start a company. However, for scientists with little business experience making the jump to the private sector can be intimidating.
To help scientists when they leave government service at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) www.nist.gov, the agency has partnered with the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) http://tedco.md which recently awarded a new round of N-STEP grants.
The NIST Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Program (N-STEP) is a collaborative effort between NIST which funds the grants and TEDCO which selected the awardees which has resulted in a total of $560,000 for the grant program.
Five new companies recently received N-STEP grants where each grant provided $112,000 to former NIST employees or associates in these new companies to develop their inventions for the market.
One of the awardees McJimpsey Biotechnologies, Inc. of Macomb, Illinois is going to focus on the design, development, validation, and manufacturing of diagnostic tests that aid in the early stage diagnosis and detection of cancer. The primary focus of the company is to commercialize a new test for the early detection of prostate cancer to increase the specificity of the prevailing assays currently in use.
Erica McJimpsey reports, “During her postdoctoral fellowship at NIST, she discovered a more sensitive and accurate test for the detection of prostate cancer. “I had never performed a market analysis or written a business plan, but I realized that developing a business plan was essential in order to receive grant funding to commercialize the test developed at NIST.”
For N-STEP program guidelines and Request for Applications go to http://tedco.md/program/in-step. For more information email Ronald Kaese Program Manager rkaese@tedco.md