Congratulations to NC State nuclear engineering professor, Dr. Steven Shannon. He will be collaborating with Karamedica, Inc. to continue developing a microparticle therapy for treating cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a condition responsible for inflicting significant neurologic damage and afflicting greater than 85% of Alzheimer’s patients.

Shannon notes that “Chitosan is an amazing material but processing it to a pharmaceutical grade at reasonable cost without damaging it is a real challenge. We have made great progress toward reaching this goal using reactive plasma processing and are excited to see this technology move forward to battle one of the most debilitating diseases of our day.”

This $2.5 million Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II grant from the National Institute on Aging builds on Karamedica’s nose-to-brain delivery system that was validated in the Phase I SBIR proof-of-concept studies using mouse models of CAA. Karamedica’s CAA therapy consists of “smart” microparticles made from chitosan, which is derived from chitin, a biopolymer obtained commercially from crustacean shells.

Dr. Shannon works in industrial applications of plasma discharges. His research focuses on enhancing current plasma applications being used and developed today and developing new plasma applications for next generation material and device fabrication.

Full Globe Newswire article is available here.