MIDDLETON, Wis.—Lucigen Corp. has announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant to fund additional research and development, receiving $2.5 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The money will go towards the development of metagenomic DNA libraries that could aid in identifying new antimicrobial and other anti-infective drug candidates. Lucigen’s partners in the Phase II work will be the University of Mississippi and Auburn University, its partner from Phase I, with whom Lucigen created a DNA library from soil microbes, which resulted in 28 new compounds that inhibit the growth of MRSA. The organizations will create several large metagenomic libraries and screen them for antimicrobial activity against four multiple-drug-resistant pathogens.