Apr 24 2008
A two-year $344,800 grant has been awarded to XetaComp Nanotechnology LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NanoBioMagnetics, Inc., (NBMI) through the Oklahoma Nanotechnology Applications Program (ONAP). The program is administered by the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST).
The grant was one of the two largest among $1.25 million in state funds awarded to eight Oklahoma companies active in nanotechnology. XetaComp also had been awarded a $250,000 grant in the first Oklahoma Nanotechnology Applications Project awards last year.
XetaComp, with offices and manufacturing facilities in Lawton, Oklahoma, was established by NBMI in 2006 to develop and market a range of functionalized nanomaterials. The company’s initial commercial target is a broad-spectrum UVA/UVB physical sunscreen on which a line of dermal care products are based and are now being introduced under the sunVex® trademark as cancer prevention tools. The technology for sunVex® is based on a proprietary nanofabrication process that yields a surface-treated titanium dioxide nanomaterial. The company’s technology offers the marketplace high-performance UVA/UVB attenuation together with cost-effective economics.
Charles Seeney, CEO and Founder of NBMI, said the infusion of working capital is important to XetaComp’s product development and commercialization efforts. “There has been tremendous interest in sunVex and related dermal care products, and the timing of this grant is highly meaningful to our success in bringing these products onto the market,” he said.
“The efforts of ONAP and OCAST’s executive director Michael Carolina are achieving significant results in positioning Oklahoma as an emerging leader in nanotechnology,” Seeney said.
NanoBioMagnetics, Inc., with offices and research facilities in Edmond, Oklahoma, is a nanobiomaterials development company pioneering an emerging area of nanomedicine referred to as Organ-Assisting-Device (OAD) technologies. As these healthcare technologies are developed and validated, NBMI’s business model calls for them to be spun off as separate business units for manufacture and commercialization, and XetaComp was organized as the first of these spinoffs.