Firefly BioWorks Announces New Grant for microRNA Research

Firefly BioWorks announces today the creation of the Firefly Frontiers Grant. With this grant, Firefly BioWorks will award $10,000 in products and services to support exploratory studies in the area of microRNA.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Firefly BioWorks announces today the creation of the Firefly Frontiers Grant, open to any scientist or engineer from an academic or non-profit research institution.

“We are excited to provide financial support to researchers for expanding the horizons of microRNA research. We encourage applicants to explore high-impact questions and those high-risk explorations that would not be normally funded through a traditional academic route”

“We are excited to provide financial support to researchers for expanding the horizons of microRNA research. We encourage applicants to explore high-impact questions and those high-risk explorations that would not be normally funded through a traditional academic route,” says Dr. Davide Marini, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Firefly BioWorks.

The Firefly Frontiers Grant is a $10,000 award to be used on any of the company’s products or services. Firefly BioWorks was founded by MIT alumni to commercialize an innovative, open approach to multiplexed detection of biomolecules. The company’s flagship product, FirePlex™ miRSelect, enables high-throughput and targeted microRNA profiling on a flow cytometer. The product is also available as a service for researchers with limited access to equipment.

Grant award decisions will be based on the quality, significance, and innovation of the proposed work, as well as on how the work may be enhanced by the use of the Firefly platform. FirePlex™ miRSelect scales easily from targeted discovery experiments to large clinical validation studies and allows profiling of up to 68 microRNA targets simultaneously in each sample. Unlike other available platforms, miRSelect is easily customized for most species with no premium charge and enables microRNA profiling of only the targets of interest.

Applications may be submitted online at https://www.fireflybio.com/grants by March 29, 2013. Awards will be announced on April 15, 2013.