The Kansas University Cancer Center and a Lawrence research firm were on the receiving end of grants approved Tuesday by the Kansas Bioscience Authority.

The Cancer Center was awarded $750,000 which will allow it to hire three researchers to support the work of center director Dr. Roy Jensen. The center currently is seeking the National Cancer Institute designation as a comprehensive cancer center.

Adding three new “up-and-comers” should help that effort, said Amy Jordan, director of public affairs at Kansas University Medical Center, which oversees the cancer center.

“We need to grow our faculty that are conducting research in all phases of the entire research spectrum,” Jordan said.

Pinnacle Technology of Lawrence will receive a $375,000 grant for the commercialization of a wireless neurochemical biosensor that supports the pre-clinicial development of new pharmaceuticals.

The awards were among $4.5 million in grants from the bioscience authority board of directors for the expansion of research and business in animal health, biomaterials, bioenergy, plant biology and drug development and discovery.

Other awards were:

¢ Colwich-based ICM will receive $1 million for a collaborative bioenergy research project to bring cellulosic ethanol solutions to the marketplace using non-food sources such as switchgrass, corn fiber and sorghum.

¢ Kansas State University was awarded $300,000 to create county-level inventory of biomass resources such as agricultural crop residues, grain and oilseed crops and herbaceous energy crops.

¢ NOWA Technology of Prairie Village was awarded $1.5 million to commercialize its patent-pending technology that chemically extracts marketable products such as fuel oil and mineral salts from municipal wastewater and eliminates the need to incinerate landfill sludge.

¢ Project Broadway, an animal-health biotechnology company, will receive $300,000 for the commercialization of a new drug to treat a common equine disorder should it move its headquarters to Kansas.