RI Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced that six Rhode Island companies, including one from Barrington, were recently selected to receive Innovation Vouchers intended to stimulate innovation, facilitate in-state partnerships and give Rhode Island a competitive edge that will help the state grow and attract business. 

NanoDe Therapeutics Inc. of Barrington will receive $50,000 and will partner with Rhode Island Hospital to discover how to best optimize the physical attributes of Nanopieces (NP) — a novel, next generation platform nucleic acid delivery technology. 

"Designed to overcome the challenge of delivering therapeutics to dense, difficult-to penetrate tissues such as cartilage, brain and solid tumor, NP may potentially be used to develop the first disease-modifying drugs to treat rare bone cancer, post-traumatic osteoarthritis, and other challenging indications," stated a press release.

This is the second round of grants to be awarded since Gov. Raimondo and the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation in partnership with the General Assembly introduced the Innovation Voucher Program in 2015. Because of high demand in the first year of applications, Innovation Voucher funding was tripled to $1.5 million for this second round.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranks Rhode Island as the second-best state in America for innovation and entrepreneurship," said Gov. Raimondo. "Our Innovation Grants give startups the spark they need to turn their ideas into businesses. Our state is on the move. In part because of our entrepreneurs and small businesses, our unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since 2001. We’ve added more than nearly 15,000 jobs since the 2014 election and businesses of all sizes are taking a fresh look at Rhode Island.”

Innovation Vouchers allow eligible Rhode Island enterprises with fewer than 500 employees to fund research and development assistance from a Rhode Island university, research center or medical center on a specific project.

Other companies to receive Innovation Vouchers included:

• BluSource Energy Inc. of Bristol: $50,000. Will partner with Brown University on the development of the Leading Edge Oscillating Foil (LEOF), a new technology to harvest tidal energy. BluSource built the LEOF prototype and test vessel, which was successfully tested on the Cape Cod Canal in 2016.

• Medley Genomics Inc. of Providence: $50,000. Will partner with Rhode Island Hospital on developing novel approaches to define genomic heterogeneity in disease. 

• PetTech LLC of Providence: $50,000. Will partner with the Biosensing Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island to hone technical specifications for the company’s Pet Rover device. 

• T-Time Productions LLC of Pawtucket: $30,000. Will partner with the New England Institute of Technology on animation, gamification and translation for ELL students to enhance the product design of a digital subscription-based curricula it is designing and prototyping.

• Vacuum Processing Systems LLC of East Greenwich: $50,000. Will partner with the University of Rhode Island to evaluate the capability of its process to clean and sterilize a variety of items from medical devices to orthopedic implants to pharmaceutical equipment at a higher level than current techniques.