GENEVA, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- GeneProt, Inc. announced today that it has independently launched its own industrial-scale proteomic study of diseases in degenerative and vascular dementias with particular emphasis on Alzheimer's disease.
For this upcoming large-scale study the Company has already secured a supply of more than two liters of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as well as the concomitant collection of more than three liters of plasma from well-characterized patients with carefully diagnosed types of dementia and from a control normal population. GeneProt large-scale approach will allow us to find proteins present at very low concentrations. This would have been very difficult with a smaller volume approach.
Importantly, the comparison of CSF from the patient and control groups will allow GeneProt to identify proteins and peptides qualitatively and quantitatively linked to the disease process with a differentiation between the various forms of dementia. "Early in 2003, we plan to file new patent applications on proteins and peptides of interest in degenerative and vascular dementias and license these to new customers", said Marc Funk, GeneProt's General Counsel. Selected proteins will then be synthesized and examined for their functions using quantitative assays.
"We believe that this will lead to a major breakthrough in research for dementia and we are confident that pharmaceutical companies interested in this specific study, will be able to develop reliable biological markers and effective drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of dementia" said Bertrand Damour, GeneProt's Chief Financial Officer.
About GeneProt -- GeneProt, Inc. is an industrial-scale proteomics company focused on separating, identifying, characterizing, selecting and, when appropriate, synthesizing certain human proteins on behalf of life sciences companies and for its own account for use in the discovery and development of new therapeutic proteins, protein drug targets and protein biomarkers. GeneProt's partners include leading pharmaceutical and technology companies and scientific institutions such as Novartis, Hewlett Packard, Bruker Daltonics, Waters Corporation, Lion bioscience and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.
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