Avaxia Biologics, Inc., a privately-held biotech company using its proprietary platform technology to develop orally-active antibody therapeutics for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases, announced today that it has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to support the development of a novel antibody therapeutic for celiac disease. This Phase I award provides Avaxia with approximately $145,000 in research and development funds. If early results are promising, the Company could receive an additional $1 million in Phase II funding.
"We are delighted to have been awarded this grant from the NIH in recognition of the potential of our novel approach to the treatment of celiac disease," said Barbara S. Fox, Ph.D., Avaxia's founder and CEO. "This NIH support provides the funding we need to advance the development of our anti-gluten antibody into pre-clinical models of celiac disease, which is a serious lifelong inherited autoimmune condition, affecting more than 2 million children and adults in the U.S. alone."
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