NovaSterilis, a Lansing, N.Y. biotech company co-founded by Cornell chemist Bruce Ganem and Tony Eisenhut '88, is the 2007 small business recipient of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. The national award recognizes individuals, groups and organizations for innovations in clean, ecofriendly chemical technology.

NovaSterilis will receive the award today (June 26) with Ganem, Eisenhut, president and CEO David Burns and company colleagues in attendance at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Ganem and Eisenhut founded NovaSterilis in 2000 to address a long-standing need for safe, effective ways of sterilizing tissue for transplants. Using a process developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Robert Langer (Cornell '70), the company designs and distributes systems that make supercritical carbon dioxide -- a low-temperature, high-pressure form of the gas, which is ideal for sterilizing delicate human tissue.

Over 2 million allografts -- human musculoskeletal tissue samples used for transplants -- have been distributed to surgeons in the United States in the past five years. But neither of the standard tissue processing treatments -- aseptic washing and gamma irradiation -- eliminates the risk of infection-causing microbes. Moreover, gamma irradiation is dangerous to people and damaging to the allograft.

"Our hope was that we might replace gamma irradiation and other toxic sterilants such as ethylene oxide, which is a mutagenic, carcinogenic substance, with carbon dioxide, which is a nonreactive, safe, naturally occurring gas, said Ganem.

At the same time, the new method is the first to completely eliminate a wide range of microbial and viral contaminants. Several tissue banks are currently using NovaSterilis technology, and the company is also studying ways of using the technique to sterilize whole-cell vaccines, drug delivery systems and other biological materials and medical devices.

"The most satisfying part, by far, has been developing a technology that addresses an important unmet medical need," Ganem said. "Hopefully none of us will ever need a bone graft or tendon transplant, but if one should become necessary, I'm pleased that now there's a way to ensure its sterility."

Along with private investors and several grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, NovaSterilis received a $40,000 investment from BR Ventures, a venture-capital fund managed by students at Cornell's Johnson School.

Ganem, who joined Cornell's faculty in 1974, is the Franz and Elisabeth Roessler Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. He has won numerous awards -- including, most recently, the American Chemical Society's 2007 Award for Creative Invention for developing a new method to synthesize the powerful cancer drug paclitaxel. Ganem is also active in Cornell's entrepreneurship program, holds multiple patents and is founder or co-founder of several biopharmaceutical and biotech companies.