VisionGate is the Recipient of Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Program

Non-Dilutive Funding for Cancer Screening Test

Phoenix, AZ, November 2, 2010 – VisionGate, an Arizona-based biomedical company, was awarded a coveted research and development tax grant. The research grants were awarded following a competitive review of thousands of applications. According to guidance released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as part of the review process for the “Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Program,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services evaluated each project for its potential to produce new therapies, reduce long-term health care costs or cure cancer.

The announcement of the $388 thousand dollar grant comes on the heels of National Lung Cancer Awareness Month which runs through the month of November. Lung Cancer is the leading cancer killer of women and men in the US, taking more lives than breast, prostate, and colon cancers combined. The Lung Cancer Partnership estimates that lung cancer kills almost twice as many American women as breast cancer and more than three times as many men as prostate cancer annually. To date, due to the lack of a cost-effective early detection method, lung cancer is usually diagnosed late when treatment options are less effective.

VisionGate, a privately held biomed/biotech company based in Phoenix, is developing a non-invasive diagnostic test for pre-symptomatic lung cancer. “VisionGate’s first clinical focus is lung cancer: the world’s number one cancer killer for which no routine exists today,” said Dr. Alan Nelson, founder of VisionGate. “Our Cell-CT platform allows us to look at a biological cell in 3-D and identify certain disease signatures before progression and symptoms occur, and this capability is a game-changing medical advancement.” It appears the research and development community is also taking note. VisionGate was awarded three additional grants this past summer totaling three million dollars.