Date: Mar 30, 2012 Author: Lauren Ohnesorge Source: bizjournals (
click here to go to the source)
RALEIGH -- Murky, gray water. That's what it looks like, sloshing around in a jar on a lab table.
"But that gray water can do anything," Xanofi CEO Miles Wright says.
And it's worth millions of dollars to Raleigh-based Xanofi.
That "gray water," is actually strands of microscopic fibers suspended in liquid. And it's the reason Xanofi, a spinoff out of N.C. State University with five full-time employees, landed what Wright describes as a multimillion-dollar contract with a U.S. filter manufacturer.
Wright refuses to reveal the exact value of the contract, nor will he name the company that awarded it. But he says the backing is enabling Xanofi to move into a new, 12,000-square-foot building on Precision Drive with five times more lab space as in its former location near the State Fairgrounds. There, it will develop the fibers for use in car filters and continue research into other ways to use the threads.
The threads hold potential for use in waterproofing -- "water rolls off it like mercury" -- and in wound repair. Skin cells can be grown on the threads, offering the potential for it to be used in repairing veins and arteries. Xanofi is also working on electromagnetic interference material for aircraft, a technology that could be ready, at least on Xanofi's end, in 2013.
Xanofi's technology is different than other nanofibers in that it is created and contained in liquids, allowing it to be produced faster, Wright says. The company has filed three patent applications and has had one accepted. Over the next few weeks, Wright plans to have around eight patents filed.
The 10-year nanofiber production contract will help pay for the research. The unnamed U.S. filter manufacturer will ship filters made from the threads to Asia starting early this summer.
Xanofi has been in business for a little more than a year, though the technology has been in the works for more than six years. The contract work means the company now is recruiting a sales force, customer service representatives and a chief financial officer.
While serial entrepreneur Wright runs the business end of the company, Sumit Gangwal, who worked on the fiber technology while working toward a Ph. D. at NCSU that he earned in 2010, oversees the science.
"Large companies have been looking for this type of solution," Gangwal says, holding a filter. As technologies become more complex, filters have to keep up and be able to filter out smaller and smaller particles. Smaller fibers are the answer, he says.
To Wright, reaching production stage isn't just an exciting development for his company. He sees it as a step forward in developing the field of what's called nanotechnology. (See accompanying story.)
"We're trying to establish North Carolina as the nano-epicenter of the universe," he says.
He and others hope to make nanotechnology and North Carolina go together like software and Silicon Valley, and they have help. COIN, the N.C. Center of Innovative Nanotechnology, has been promoting North Carolina's potential since its 2009 establishment with a $2.6 million grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
COIN aims to help businesses such as Xanofi take their technologies into production, and North Carolina, specifically the Triangle, is the ideal locale, Executive Director Griffith Kundahl says.
COIN's research manager, Graeme Ossey, estimates there are 70 companies in the state that utilize nanotechnology, with about 50 of those in the Triangle.
