Pulmatrix might have just the defense for soldiers against respiratory invaders. Now the Lexington, MA-based biotech firm has won a $5.7 million grant to advance its technology that originated at MIT and Harvard for defense purposes.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense, awarded the firm the grant to fund research for two years that is intended to lead to an inhaled dry-powder therapy, according to the company. The idea is to provide a soldier with one inhaled therapy that could treat and prevent multiple lung infections, including those brought on by natural pathogens or acts of biological warfare. The treatment could also be given to civilians, according to the company.
CEO Robert Connelly explained that this grant complements the work his firm is already doing to develop inhaled dry-powder therapies for reducing the effects of respiratory ailments such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Yet this defense award calls for the firm’s therapy to be delivered with a small inhaler that a soldier would carry during a mission. First, though, the company needs to develop the powder formula for the inhaler, then develop the inhaler itself.
“If you put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who is [at war] somewhere around the world, it’s not known what weapon or what viruses that are specific to that locale are in the air,” Connelly said. “So off the bat what you get with our technology is a take-on-all-comers approach” to combating multiple inhaled pathogens.
Defense agencies have known of the startup for years. Founded in 2003 with technology from the labs of Bob Langer at MIT and David Edwards at Harvard University, the firm received some of its early support through $1.8 million in defense- and homeland security-related funding from the U.S. government’s Technical Support Working Group, according to Connelly.
The DARPA grant will support work of the company’s core technology that has already helped the firm raise $45 million in equity investments from
