Local High-Tech Startup Nets $600K Federal Grant

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a two-year $600,000 grant to a Stony Brook start-up that produces computer-generated viruses for use by pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines, according to a report in Newsday.

The company, Codagenix, is based at the university's . According to Rob Coleman, vice president of business devleopment, the company uses a computer algorithm to speed up the process of creating mutated viruses for use in creating vaccines; Coleman said Codagenix's viruses are designed to be stronger than those traditional viruses. "It is a debilitated virus that looks exactly like a killer one," Coleman told Newsday.

Based on the research of university professor , Codagenix launched in 2011.

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