Acacia Research wins $689,000 Air Force contract

Dispatches from the influenza front: Newport Beach, California-based Acacia Research announced (.pdf) last week that its CombiMatrix subsidiary had been awarded a $869,000 contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory to advance its field-deployable influenza genotyping system. (Based upon the company’s CustomArray microarray platform and ElectraSense detection technologies, the system can identify bird flu, all human strains of influenza, and various other upper-respiratory pathogens — all by relying on the 2000 or so genetic sequences so far identified by scientists worldwide. (See our recent report on an alternative approach that uses uses a waveguide and nanoantennas.) The Air Force, however, wants even greater sensitivity, so Acacia will be using the contract to update its array with the latest sequences and tailor the array for the service’s specific needs.”This effort demonstrates the power of our technology to rapidly refine our arrays as new information becomes available,” said CombiMatrix’s Dr. David Danley.