EAI to begin government-funded influenza screening program with CombiMatrix technology

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, May 17 - Acacia Research Corp. said Wednesday that its CombiMatrix group will collaborate with EAI Corp., a subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp.(SAIC), for field deployment of CombiMatrix's influenza-screening technology for the identification of all versions of influenza A, including the highly pathogenic Eurasian (H5N1) strain.

Funding for this program will be provided by the Center for Innovative Technology/Institute for Defense and Homeland Security through its partnership intermediary agreement with the Department of Defense, according to a company news release.

Additional partners in this project include the San Francisco Bay Estuary Field Station of the U.S. Geological Survey/Western Ecological Research Center and the Prince William Sound Science Center of Cordova, Alaska, officials said.

"The U.S. government continues to be justifiably concerned about the entrance of highly pathogenic avian influenza into North America, and CombiMatrix continues to demonstrate the power of its technology in this realm," Amit Kumar, president and chief executive officer of CombiMatrix, said in the release.

Based in Newport Beach, Calif., Acacia comprises two operating groups, Acacia Technologies group and CombiMatrix group. CombiMatrix is developing a platform technology to rapidly produce customizable arrays, which are semiconductor-based tools for use in identifying and determining the roles of genes, gene mutations and proteins.

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