Axon Nutritionals Receives Project Grant

Inside VT KnowledgeWorks

About entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship at VT KnowledgeWorks

November 18, 2010

Axon Nutritionals Receives Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Grant

VT KnowledgeWorks is pleased to announce that member company, Axon Nutritionals, Inc., has been awarded a grant under the U.S. Government’s Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project (QTDP) program established under Section 48D of the Internal Revenue Code. The company’s grant award is related to the application submitted for its research and development efforts addressing nutritional deficiencies with safe, therapeutic formulations sourced from bioactive compounds.

"This grant award will support our continued work in therapeutic formulations as well as our drug discovery and toxicology screening investigations using the pig as an in vivo model," said Axon Nutritionals Scientific Advisor David E. Gerrard, Professor and Head, Virginia Tech Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences. "We look forward to developing new testing paradigms that provide information on liabilities associated with new chemical entities early in the nutraceutical and drug development process."

"We congratulate Axon Nutritionals and are grateful to the program reviewers at the Department of Human Heath and Services who recognized the potential of our member company’s focus on human health," said VT KnowledgeWorks Director Jim Flowers. "It is refreshing to see the company founders leverage their experience and networks to form partnerships and collaborations between pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, academia, and other research organizations in the drug discovery market."

Axon Nutritionals, Inc. was founded by two veterans of the nutritional, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries in response to increasing public, health-care, and regulatory concerns over food, nutrition, and prescription drug safety. Classified as a woman-owned business, Axon is a nutraceutical development firm and contract research organization (CRO) that partners with academics to meet increasing demands from pharmaceutical drug discovery and research institutes.

***

VT KnowledgeWorks is a unique growth enhancement program open to entrepreneurs in the New River Valley and beyond. Acceleration center and incubation facilities are located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia. Programs for Members are divided into two categories according to the evolutionary status of the member company. Pre-Launch program components are carefully constructed to help market-worthy ventures organize, formulate strategy, obtain outside investment, and launch in an efficient manner. Enterprise class members benefit from emphasis on strategic support for ongoing growth, continuing intra-preneurship, and professional development for the corporate leader.

VT KnowledgeWorks sponsors include Attaain, Inc., BB&T, Handshake 2.0, Harris Office Furniture, Hodges, Jones & Mabry, P.C., Hutchison Law Group, LeClairRyan, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)and The Becher Agency (TBA).

Read the article