MatriCal lands grant

Spokane biotech equipment-maker MatriCal, Inc. has landed an $852,000 federal grant to push development of its newest product, which uses sonic waves to mix chemicals.

MatriCal CEO Dan Roark said the company landed a fast-track Small Business Innovation Research grant that runs for three years.

Fast-track SBIR grants are relatively rare. In most SBIRs, a company gets an initial round of money for one year, then has to reapply for the rest. In a fast-track grant the money is guaranteed for the full three years “because they’ve decided your idea has strong value,” said Roark.

MatriCal, which is based in the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute building, will use the money for further development of its SonicMan instrument, which the company launched earlier this year.

The machine sells for about $75,000 and is in demand by companies testing and developing drugs or by researchers working with genetic products.

Its most clear-cut use will be with pharmaceutical companies that must deal with the problem of thawing chemicals that are kept for years in frozen storage, Roark said. When those chemicals are needed, most methods of thawing them don’t do an adequate job of keeping the compounds fully effective.

Through the use of sonic waves, the SonicMan keeps the thawed and remixed chemicals more active and contamination-free, he said.

The SonicMan also can be used to break genetic materials into small fragments for use in DNA research or analysis.

MatriCal also manufactures a large machine, the MatriStore, which sells for more than $1 million. The MatriStore can hold more than a million chemical samples on trays that allow rapid retrieval.

“This SBIR grant is a very big deal for the area and for MatriCal,” said SIRTI Executive Director Patrick Tam. “It shows they’re a very strong company.”

Roark said the grant will likely lead to the addition of three more workers, either scientists or product engineers. That would give MatriCal 22 employees. As the company grows, it’s looking at taking space in the new SIRTI Technology Center, which has been funded and will be constructed over the next year in the Riverpoint Higher Education Park. That move will depend on MatriCal obtaining a second federal grant, said Kevin Oldenburg, president of the company.