Ground Fluor Pharmaceuticals Secures Funding For Isotope Development
Ground Fluor Pharmaceuticals, which is a medical technology startup based out of Lincoln, Nebraska, has secured funding from public and private sources. The company was able to garner investment from Cedarville Investments Ltd., which is based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The National Science Foundation also provided the company with a $726,000 grant.
Dr. Allan Green, the company’s CEO, released a statement on the company’s private funding. “This private funding, which builds on previous support by the NSF and the State of Nebraska, strengthens Ground Fluor, and takes us to the next step where we can provide our initial products to clinicians, and continue to pursue other ongoing research activities. With this focus on implementation, we can achieve our business goals and position Ground Fluor as a leading provider of novel imaging agents and synthetic methods for biomedical research and development and for improved clinical imaging services in support of patient care,” said Green.
Ground Fluor Pharmaceuticals has produced a new way to develop radioactive pharmaceutical chemicals that are used in advanced medical imaging. Ground Fluor’s isotopes are produced via a patented process that only takes half the time of current methods. The resulting chemical is also of a higher purity than methods can produce. However, while it only requires half the time to develop the necessary isotopes, “[the compound] is quite difficult to produce,” Stephen DiMagno, Ground Fluor’s co-founder, said. “The compound’s half-life is only about 110 minutes. That means every 110 minutes, you have half the drugs for use that you synthesized.”
The company believes that the first round of funding that it received will help to further their product, allowing more medical facilities gain access to the radioactive isotopes for use in PET scans. The drugs have to be made close to the site where they are used because of their radioactive nature.
Dr. Kiel Neumann, Grand Fluor Pharma’s associate director of research and development says that these funds will be key to the continued development and GMP manufacture of final Positron Emission Tomographic (PET) drug products, such as 18F-FlioroDOPA and 18F-fluorophenylalanine, among others.