There are advantages to starting up a biotech company in Montana. For instance, companies like Montana Molecular that receive federal SBIR Phase 1 grants are eligible for state matching funds and can be used to help cover patent applications, business development activities and marketing activities that are necessary to launch new technology products.
Montana Molecular was awarded SBIR matching funds from the Montana Department of Commerce in June 2012 . The company is using this award to commercialize new diacylglycerol sensor technology . The original SBIR funding from NIMH funded a project to develop a genetically-encoded diacylglycerol (DAG) sensor. We built and screened hundreds of candidate sensors in living cells. The change in fluorescence intensity produces a robust signal on a fluorescence plate reader. In our case, a Biotek Synergy MX.
