MicroProbe Wins $50,000 Research Grant: MicroProbe Corp. of Garden Grove said it has won a $50,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health for work on

using synthetic DNA to combat the Hepatitis B virus. The research, being conducted at the company’s therapeutics division in Bothell, Wash., involves using short, synthetic pieces of DNA

that recognize, bind to and disable abnormal DNA in a cell. The company hopes eventually to deliver the synthetic DNA as an “anti-gene drug” that would block the activity of a particular

gene, in this case Hepatitis B, said Rich B. Meyer, vice president of research and development for the therapeutics division. MicroProbe is a privately held company.