How did Ribomed first get involved in developing detection technologies for bioterrorism agents?
Michelle Hanna: At the time of its founding, Ribomed had just received funding from the National Cancer Institute. We were working on detection systems for tumor suppressor silencing through CpG methylation, which had nothing to do with biodefense. We had just developed an extremely robust, isothermal signal-generation and molecular-detection process called Abscription (abortive transcription) that can be used to detect protein, DNA, RNA, SNPs, or CpG methylation sites. Then, about the time that we were finishing up Phase 1 of our funding, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred. After that, government grant money began to shift. We were contacted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is a division of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). DARPA was looking for new molecular detection technologies that could be used for extremely rapid and very accurate detection of environmental pathogens that would be a concern to first responders. We were worki
