National Institutes of Health Awards $750,000 Grant to NanoMech

New Nanostructured Coating System Being Developed for Biomedical Devices

Fayetteville, Arkansas - NanoMech, LLC has received a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a nanostructured coating system for biomedical implants. This system will allow application of coatings made from nano and micro size particles of a variety of beneficial materials that can improve success rates for implants.

Nanoparticles are the smallest particles currently available to scientists and engineers for industrial and biomedical applications. They range in size from about 1/1,000th to 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. Nanostructured materials are allowing the development of greatly improved and multifunctional coating applications. "The potential biomedical applications include coatings for dental, hip and other implants that significantly improve the life and functionality of the devices and can allow more rapid and comfortable recovery of a patient," says Ajay P. Malshe, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of NanoMech. "Passive coatings of bio-friendly materials can be applied rapidly to implants with complex three-dimensional geometries and intricate shapes. The system also has the potential to apply 'active' coatings that could include agents for fighting bacterial infection or for drug delivery."

NanoMech has an exclusive license from the University of Arkansas to commercialize products that use an electrostatic spray coating technology to create coatings that are not practical with other approaches. Unlike large suppliers of nanoparticles, there are very few companies like NanoMech that are innovating coating processes, a powerful avenue to apply carefully engineered nanoparticles on industry and society useful parts at low cost, allowing nanotechnology innovations to benefit society and gain wide commercial use. The NIH grant was awarded following successful completion of an earlier Phase I SBIR study that showed the feasibility and benefits of the coating system.

"This grant comes at a particularly good time for NanoMech as the company is already moving into production with some of its early product concepts," says Calvin Goforth, President of Virtual Incubation Company, a technology enterprise development company that has been providing business development support to NanoMech. "One of the objectives of the NIH project is to scale up the coating equipment to production scale."

Steve Rust, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Fayetteville Economic Development Council noted that "NanoMech has the potential to become a significant-scale operation for Northwest Arkansas, bringing new high quality jobs, new revenues and new opportunities to the area."

The total funding expected under this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award is $750,000. This is the ninth SBIR award to be made to NanoMech since January 2003.