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Shedding labels
December 2009
EDIT CONNECT
SHARING OPTIONS:
WOBURN, Mass.—Caliper Life Sciences recently entered into an
agreement with SRU Biosystems to use its label-free BIND technology to offer
new functional assays as part of its discovery alliances and services. Under
the agreement, Caliper will use SRU's label-free BIND technology for
high-throughput screening and profiling for cell-based and biochemical assays.
Financial terms of the agreement were not released.
According to Philippe Mourere, director of marketing and
sales for Caliper Life Sciences, Caliper plans to incorporate SRU's platform in
contract services it offers to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical research
communities.
"We are really hoping to establish the label-free method as
the way to go for cell-based GPCR," notes Mourere.
The label-free BIND technology, developed by SRU, provides
researchers with a new ultra-high- throughput screening and profiling system
for cell-based and biochemical assays. BIND technology for cell-based assays
offers an orthogonal screening tool to access new hits and lead molecules that
are not detected by other systems, including compounds that undergo G-protein
switching, non-G protein coupled pathways, inverse and partial agonists and
receptor desensitization.
The screening platform is robust and can be applied to both
over-expressed and endogenous receptors, and can be used with low numbers of
primary cells. The technology can also used for receptor profiling on native
cells, due to the high sensitivity of the response. Lastly, the BIND technology
provides a way to easily screen Gi-coupled GPCR targets and ion channels, which
have been traditionally difficult to assess.
Dr. Rick Wagner, president and CEO of SRU, says Caliper Life
Sciences is an excellent partner for SRU.
"They are uniquely positioned to offer BIND technology as a
contract service to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical communities," he
points out. "They have tremendous knowledge utilizing innovative technologies
to advance drug discovery and will provide an outstanding new service to the
drug discovery industry."
SRU Biosystems' label-free BIND technology can be used for
complex cellular assays such as GPCR pathway analysis, ion channel assays and
cell adhesion assays; as well as biochemical assays, such as protein-protein
binding, enzyme assays and fragment and small molecule screening. These
applications have been utilized in exploring assay development, 1536-well high
throughput screening and lead profiling. SRU anticipates a continued expansion
of its label-free BIND products, creating new assay capabilities.
Mourere says SRU Biosystem's BIND Reader provides a
flexible, label-free detection system that the company can use to perform both in
vitro biochemical assays as well as
functional cell-based assays.
According to Mourere, assays that use labeled components are
common in drug discovery, but labels have disadvantages.
"They can disrupt natural binding, require time consuming
and costly modifications to original assay components, and may not accurately
capture all aspects of the pharmacology of a receptor signaling pathway," he
notes. "The BIND label-free technology offers distinct advantages and allows
for the detection of in vitro biochemical assays (e.g. protein-drug,
protein-protein), and cell-based assays without the need for conventional
labels."
For biochemical assays, Mourere notes that measuring direct
binding of a ligand to its protein target provides necessary information for
chemists to advance drugs through the discovery process.
"Researchers use NMR and X-ray crystallography to get direct
binding data, but because these methods are low-throughput, they can only be
used on a small number of compounds further down in the drug discovery
pipeline," he says. "SPR has been another common technology used to obtain
direct binding data. While it provides important affinity information, the
technology does not have the throughput capabilities to be used as a primary
screening platform."
Furthermore, the microfluidics of SPR systems make them
susceptible to aggregating or promiscuous binding compounds, he adds.
"The plate-based BIND Reader provides direct binding data in
a very high-throughput platform and easily identifies aggregating compounds in
one assay," Mourere points out. "This allows scientists to eliminate non-binder
and aggregating compounds from their library early on in the pipeline. The BIND
Reader is a complementary technology and fills the gap between uHTS enzymatic
assays and lower throughput SPR and NMR assays."
With cell-based assays, the BIND technology provides a
flexible platform to perform functional cell-based assays on a range of surface
receptor target classes (e.g. GPCRs, ion channels, RTKs) in a variety of
backgrounds.
"Because the label-free technology requires no labels, cell
lines do not require the extensive modification necessary for more traditional
assays. This greatly simplifies assay development," Mourere says. "Researchers
can easily assay receptors over-expressed in cell lines (both adherent and
suspension), and then immediately validate those hits in more physiologically
relevant cell lines with endogenous receptors, and then primary cells using the
same BIND platform. Because the label-free technology provides a whole cell
response, the system is ideal for compound profiling and pathway
analysis."
Mourere points out that label-free detection is a powerful
new technology in drug discovery research, but the adoption of new technology
takes time and validation.
"The SRU and Caliper partnership will make the label-free
technology more accessible to the drug discovery research community," he notes.
"It will allow researchers to validate the technology with little risk and
expand the potential applications for the technology. Caliper customers have
now access to a broad range of label-free contract research services
encompassing custom assay development or screening compounds libraries in a
growing number of catalog assays."
Code: E120916 Back |
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