Luna Innovations Inc. Announces $2.1 Million Grant for BioDefense Agent

ROANOKE, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Luna Innovations Incorporated (NASDAQ:LUNA) has been awarded a $2.1 million three-year contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a novel therapeutic for infectious diseases. Bacterial, viral and parasitic intracellular pathogens, organisms that sustain infection by living inside a person's cells, use the cell’s signaling pathways to establish and maintain infection. Luna has previously demonstrated that a protein involved in cell-to-cell communication called ribosomal S6 kinase (RSK), is critical for intracellular pathogens to maintain infection. For this program, Luna will advance a new class of anti-infective therapeutics, based upon RSK inhibition, to interfere with the ability of the pathogen to establish infection and survive inside the host organism. Anti-infective therapeutics are especially critical due to the potential to weaponize intracellular pathogens as an agent of biowarfare.