Three Dallas-Fort Worth startups are getting a multimillion-dollar boost from Texas’ cancer-fighting agency to help turn medical research into products.

Barricade Therapeutics Corp. of Fort Worth, Dialectic Therapeutics Inc. of Dallas and Texas Magnetic Imaging Technology Inc. of Dallas are each getting nearly $3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The grants are part of more than $21 million in awards to North Texas-based cancer initiatives in CPRIT’s latest funding round. Texas voters approved an additional $3 billion investment for cancer research and prevention last fall, adding to an earlier $3 billion commitment. The agency has now handed out $2.49 billion in grants to Texas research institutions.

Besides the product development grants, CPRIT is giving $1.137 million to Eric Olson, a renowned muscle disease researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, for his work on targeted therapies for a soft tissue tumor in children and adolescents and nearly $5.4 million to six other research projects at the Dallas hospital. Two cancer researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas will receive a combined $1.8 million.

UT Southwestern is also getting $2 million to recruit Adam Durbin from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for a tenure-track faculty position and an additional $2 million to expand a colorectal screening program.

The product development grants to Barricade, Dialectic and Texas Magnetic Imaging are intended to assist the nascent companies in bringing new technologies to the commercial market.

Barricade, an early stage pharmaceutical company headed by CEO and chief scientific officer Neil Thapar, will use its $2,999,376 award for clinical trials of a colorectal cancer drug that selectively kills a gene present in more 80% of patients. CPRIT said the drug was identified during earlier research it backed by UT Southwestern’s Jerry Shay.

Colorectal cancer kills around 900,000 people a year, according to an executive summary on Barricade’s website. It said initial tests of the drug on animals had positive results with no bad side effects.

“We have a straightforward development plan to reach human proof of concept in 2021, which is a key value-generating event,” according to the executive summary. “Comparable exits at this stage have been worth over $1 billion.”

Thapar’s previous experience includes six years as director of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics at Reata Pharmaceuticals, a Plano-based drug developer that raised more than $505 million in a stock sale in November to speed its transition from a clinical-stage biotech startup to a company that makes treatments for life-threatening diseases.

Dialectic, a preclinical biotechnology company headed by cofounders David Genecov and John Harkey Jr., will receive $3 million for cancer drug development. Genecov, a Dallas craniofacial surgeon, and Harkey also were cofounders of gene therapy company AveXis, which sold to Novartis for $8.7 billion in 2018.

Texas Magnetic Imaging will use its $2,997,384 to develop an imaging system for radiation therapy.

Other D-FW cancer researchers receiving grants are: