A multi-disciplinary technical team partnered with Virtual Incubation Company, a privately held technology venture development company, in the formation of Vegrandis, LLC in April, 2002.  The company exclusively licensed patent pending approaches to microelectrochemical-based detection systems (9 pending patents) from the University of Arkansas.  These patents covered detection methods, a variety of bioassay and environmental monitoring applications, and device construction techniques.

With the initial team and intellectual property foundation in place, the company began seeking federal funding for further development of its promising, but not fully developed, technology.  Its very first grant proposal, a Phase I SBIR application to the Environmental Protection Agency for water pathogen monitoring, was funded.  That EPA funded project began in April, 2003 and marked the first in a series of federal awards for development of commercially promising applications of Vegrandis’ core technology.  In addition to success in gaining federal funding support, which is in large part attributable to the outstanding merits of its core technologies,  Vegrandis has also successfully raised private equity from two investment groups: The Fund for Arkansas’ Future and The Alpha Fund I, LLC.   The private equity is being used for business development and intellectual property expenses.

Vegrandis released its first products, self-contained microelectrochemical detection array chips and extremely pure associated reagents, in May, 2006.  Additional products will be introduced within the next year.