Alachua’s Banyan gets $13 million DoD funding

ALACHUA – Alachua-based Banyan Biomarkers has been awarded a $13 million contract from the Department of Defense (DoD) so they can continue to research a new blood test used to diagnose brain trauma.

The Department of Defense is interested in Banyan Biomarkers research because it could be useful for military doctors and would require less equipment and time than current brain trauma tests, said CEO Jackson Streeter.

Ron Hayes, founder and leading researcher, compared the blood results of a head trauma patient to a patient that has had a heart attack because they both give off proteins when they are injured.

When the brain cells are injured or die, proteins from the brain cells enter into the blood, Hayes said. Banyan can measure those proteins to determine how bad the damage is.

Those proteins found in the brain helped researchers including Hayes at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute start Banyan Biomarkers in 2002.

Since the founding of the company, Streeter said the research has put the city of Alachua on the map, making it a much-watched city for developmental medicine.

“Banyan is developing first-in-class, first-ever breakthrough technology for traumatic brain injury,” Streeter said. “If all of our work succeeds, it will come to affect the whole region.”

With the activity of the Innovation Gainesville initiative, a program created to foster innovative thinking and success, and the support of the University of Florida, more research facilities like Banyan Biomarkers and Sid Martin Biotech will be encouraged to move to the Alachua area, he said.

The company has been working with the Department of Defense for several years, Streeter said, so the DoD was aware of the research that Banyan Biomarkers has been doing in brain trauma.

“The DoD has a very large interest in being able to diagnose and treat traumatic brain injury, and that stems mainly from the large amount of brain injuries that have come out of Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

The government’s interest in new tests for brain trauma is not unreasonable, Hayes said. With the tests for brain trauma now, nobody can be certain how severe a brain injury is.

“To have a blood test as an objective determination, an actual organic determination of brain injury, that would be a very important asset,” he said.

Banyan Biomarkers is working to begin clinical trials to receive FDA approval of their diagnoses in early 2014 so that the company can begin to market the product.

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