Discerna Ltd.
When Xenova acquired KS Biomedix, they got 50% of Discerna along with it. Can't see much happening soon, as they don't have significant funding, but worth parking, I think.
discerna.co.uk
The Company
Our company was founded in June 2001 to exploit discoveries in ribosome display made in the laboratories of the Babraham Institute (nr. Cambridge, UK).
We were formed as Babraham's first spin-out; a 50:50 joint venture between Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd and KS Biomedix Holdings Plc.
Intellectual Property
We possess a world wide exclusive license from The Babraham Institute to the ribosome display technology pioneered initially by Mingyue He and Mike Taussig. Since acquiring the license, Discerna has made further improvements to the technology which have broadened the scope of an already strong patent estate. The company now has a complementary patent portfolio containing four patent families. Further information on any of our patents can be obtained by contacting info@discerna.co.uk.
Since our formation, we have established laboratories on the Babraham research campus, recruited key scientific staff and refined our unique technologies. We are now in a position to fully exploit these in the discovery and development of new antibody therapeutics.
Using a SMART II award from the DTI, we are developing methodology for high speed parallel synthesis of antibodies and automation of other technologies and processes used by the company.
Commercial programmes
We have ongoing internal and partnered pre-clinical development programmes....
...Advantages of ribosome display
1. A major advantage of the Discerna cell free ribosome display system lies in its ability to display the full potential of extremely large DNA libraries, unhampered by the need for bacterial transformation, an acknowledged limiting factor in making phage or cell based display libraries.
2. Ribosome display libraries are also easy and quick to prepare since they are made through PCR and in vitro translation and do not require cloning steps.
3. Various additional factors reduce library diversity generated from cell based systems, e.g. certain proteins may not be secreted, may be proteolysed or form inclusion bodies, leading to their absence from the final library. Similarly, toxic proteins, which are harmful to the bacterial host cell, can be made in vitro but not in cell based display libraries, including phage display.
4. Ribosome display is ideal for performing in vitro protein evolution required for the production of high affinity antibodies since diversity can be continuously introduced (e.g. by PCR mutagenesis) and mutants selected without cloning steps.
5. Post-translational modifications, such as glycosylation, phosphorylation or acetylation, can be introduced into proteins made during eukaryotic ribosome display, but this cannot be done in phage display. Modified or labelled amino acids can also be incorporated at defined positions in vitro.
6. The enrichment factors obtained in the Discerna ribosome display system of 104 per cycle are significantly greater than that usually reported either for other display methods.... |
