Last weekend, 2,923 small US biotechnology companies received some very good news: each had won an award from the $1 billion Therapeutic Discovery Project Program (TDPP). The program, established by the health-care reform bill passed earlier this year, awards tax credits and grants to biotechnology firms with fewer than 250 employees.

Each company could submit applications for multiple projects, leading to early fears that the TDPP would be oversubscribed. (For more, see ‘US biotech firms line up for tax credits’.) Indeed, although the program had a maximum award of $5 million per company, none of them came close to hitting that ceiling. There were 5,600 entries, said National Institutes of Health chief Frances Collins in a press conference today. Over 4,600 of those projects were deemed eligible for an award, rendering each slice of the $1 billion pie relatively small. Award sizes vary according to the needs of each proposal, but a quick search through the list of awards suggests that none surpassed $244,479 per project.

Nevertheless, some companies came out big winners. Theravance, based in South San Francisco, California, won a total of nearly $2.69 million for 11 projects. The Boston-based drug developer Arisaph topped that with $2.8 million for 12 projects. And several companies that have been visibly struggling to stay afloat got a welcome boost: the stem-cell firm Advanced Cell Technology received four awards of $244,479 each, and Helicos, which makes single-molecule DNA sequencers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received three for a total of $721,514.

With the $1 billion set aside by the health care reform act already spent, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which played a key role in lobbying congress for the TDPP, has set its sights on expanding the program for another year.

Image: Tracy O via Flickr