AUSTIN, TX /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Luminex Corp., a leading multiplex-solution developer, announced that the company has received a research grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which will be administered through the Department of the Army's Army Research Office. The $300,000 research grant covers a 12-month period and will focus on developing the company's emerging chip-scale xMAP technology for bio-defense applications. The chip-scale concept is a radically new approach that leverages Luminex's proven flagship xMAP technology, which is a bead-based flow cytometry solution for multiplexing biological assays, to perform the detection of bio-pathogens on the scale of a microchip.
Dr. John Carrano, vice president of research and development of Luminex Corp., stated, "A successful and practical solution for biosensors to combat terrorism will require a compact and relatively inexpensive detector capable of doing species identification with high sensitivity and specificity; that is precisely the goal of the chip-scale xMAP technology project."
About Luminex Corp.
Luminex Corp. develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary biological testing technologies with applications throughout the life sciences industry. The company's xMAP system is an open-architecture, multi-analyte technology platform that delivers fast, accurate, and cost-effective bioassay results to markets as diverse as pharmaceutical drug discovery, clinical diagnostics, and biomedical research, including the genomics and proteomics research markets. The company's xMAP technology is sold worldwide and is used in leading research laboratories and by major pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and biotechnology companies. Further information on Luminex Corp. or xMAP can be obtained on the Internet.