Pantherics Incorporated, a UWM startup company received a $255,841 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, to advance development of a fundamentally novel anti-inflammatory drug, with lead clinical indications in asthma/COPD, dermatology, and gastrointestinal disorders. The first-in-class drug, PI301 (aka MIDD0301), was discovered by researchers at the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Columbia University (NY). With the SBIR funding, PI301 will be developed further by Pantherics to validate an optimal oral formulation, a key step before advancing to human clinical testing.