Professor Martin Yarmush and colleagues at a new biotech start-up, Nivarta, Inc., have been awarded a 2-year, $700,000 NIH Phase I SBIR grant entitled, "Development of a discovery platform based on microfluidics and fluorescent cell functional assays". The overall goal of the project is to develop a discovery platform based on microfluidics and functional cell assays that is suitable for screening hundreds of proteins or small-molecule compounds simultaneously in a cost-effective and high throughput manner. The project is based on Prof. Yarmush's Living Cell Array technology which combines reporter cells, microfabrication and microfluidics, and automated time-lapse microscopy.