Very interesting -
Dec. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Genencor International, Inc. (Nasdaq: GCOR - news) announced today the recent publication of a study in the Journal of Immunotherapy, which describes the company's epitope mapping technology. Genencor's new technology has widespread implications for the development of proteins in the therapeutics, consumer, industrial and agricultural and sectors.
The Journal article details the development of an in vitro cell-based assay, which systematically analyzes specific regions spanning the length of a protein for their ability to induce an allergic reaction. Regions of a protein that induce an allergic reaction are known as epitopes. Once these epitopes are identified, Genencor can re-engineer the protein to remove these potentially allergenic sections with minimal effect on protein function. The far-reaching applications of this technology will allow the company and its partners to develop consumer products and therapeutics with an extremely low risk of generating a deleterious immune response.
``This technology uniquely positions Genencor to identify and reduce the allergenic potential of proteins,'' said W. Thomas Mitchell, chairman and chief executive officer of Genencor. ``Current methods are unable to effectively predict the allergenic potential of a protein. In light of recent news events surrounding genetically modified crops and protein therapeutics, we believe this technology will play a key role in the development of new, reduced allergenic products.''
The power of molecular biology techniques has resulted in the increasingly prevalent use of proteins for agricultural, consumer and therapeutic applications. In the vast majority of exposures to these proteins there are no deleterious health effects experienced. However, there have been several instances where these proteins have been implicated in the induction of harmful allergic responses.
``A major obstacle facing protein therapeutics and gene-therapy vectors is that a patient's immune system has the potential to react adversely to the treatment,'' stated Dr. Michael V. Arbige, senior vice president of research and development for Genencor. ``Current approaches to overcoming this obstacle, which include humanizing protein antibodies and applying predictive software, have shown limited progress. This study validates a very promising approach to solving this problem.''... |
