A Connecticut biotechnology firm started by a Yale University scientist recently relocated to Indianapolis and plans to hire there, the Indianapolis Business Journal reports.
Companion Diagnostics Inc. says its chemical-screening machines can help researchers for Eli Lilly & Co., Roche Diagnostics and others identify key markers in patient fluids that allow more rapid detection of such diseases as cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis, the paper reports on its Web site.
Companion Diagnostics was founded by Yale scientist Richard Selinfreund, who has a background in biochemistry and physics.
The company, which currently employs six people at the Indiana University Emerging Technology Center, plans to add 30 workers by 2014, paying an average annual salary of $90,000, the paper said.
Because of those eye-popping numbers, the City of Indianapolis wants to give the company a tax abatement worth $290,355.
Companion Diagnostics develops computer-chip-sized diagnostic devices using high-speed chemical screening systems to evaluate the effectiveness of biological markers for disease.
One of the tools could provide a better field diagnostic test for tuberculosis, which would benefit less-developed countries where TB infection rates are high. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have developed a potential biomarker to detect TB in urine samples, and IU could provide the patient samples for testing, including samples from its collaboration with Moi University in Kenya.
