>>CARLSBAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2004-- Invitrogen Corporation (Nasdaq:IVGN - News), a provider of essential life science technologies for disease research and drug discovery, today unveiled the world's first commercially available microarray optimized for maximally functional proteins--the ProtoArray(TM) Human Protein Microarray. This high-density protein microarray, containing more than 1,800 unique human proteins, represents a cross-section of gene families including pharmaceutically relevant protein classes such as kinases, membrane-associated, cell-signaling and metabolic proteins. The ProtoArray allows identification of protein-protein interactions in as little as four hours as contrasted with the weeks required for similar experiments to date.
Invitrogen's latest offering is the first high-density array containing a high percentage of functional human proteins. Using Invitrogen's proprietary ProtoP5(TM) expression and purification technology, proteins on the ProtoArray slide retain superior activity profiles when compared to arrays produced using E. Coli based expression methods.
"Making a protein microarray like the ProtoArray available to the market means that we are able to address key challenges our customers face in developing new therapeutics," explained Dr. Claude Benchimol, Invitrogen's Senior Vice President, Research and Development. "Pharmaceutical companies need to accelerate target identification in their discovery efforts and study off target effects to help reduce failure rates, and now for the first time, there is a tool that rapidly helps them do both."
This first-in-class research tool supports the current shift from genome projects to an emphasis on studying proteins and protein function on a system wide, or proteome, scale. This is particularly important for pharmaceutical firms since proteins make up the majority of therapeutic targets. The ProtoArray is available to both commercial and academic researchers for studying a wide variety of protein interactions including protein-protein, protein-DNA and antibody specificity experiments.
"We have used the ProtoArray to search for components of a signaling pathway that regulates neural development," said Dr. Anthony Koleske at Yale University's Departments of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Neurobiology. "These high density arrays give us a very sensitive assay to identify pathway components that can not be found using more traditional approaches."
The ProtoArray Human Protein Microarray contains proteins derived almost entirely from Invitrogen's Ultimate(TM) ORF Clone Collection, assuring high-quality content through sequence verification and quality control measures. Additionally, the ProtoArray Human Protein Microarray pulls together key technologies from several important areas of Invitrogen's business including labeling and detection technologies from its Molecular Probes group, cloning technologies from its Functional Genomics business and protein array development capabilities gained through the acquisition of ProtoMetrix, Inc.
"By making high performance, high throughput and user friendly protein analyses widely available and affordable, our ProtoArray technology has the potential to jumpstart the growth of the protein array market, and is an example of Invitrogen's commitment to technology and market leadership," said Gregory T. Lucier, Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. "ProtoArray is the first-in-class entrant in a market that could mirror the growth of the highly-successful DNA microarray segment. Invitrogen's global distribution reach, outstanding technical service and ability to provide integrated products and services across the entire continuum of research make it the ideal marketer for this breakthrough product."
The world's first commercial proteome array, the Yeast ProtoArray, was introduced by Invitrogen at the BIO 2004 conference in San Francisco in June. Launch of the Yeast ProtoArray and development of the human protein products follows Invitrogen's acquisition of the former Protometrix in Branford, Connecticut and the integration of their breakthrough technologies with Invitrogen's product portfolio and marketing and development capabilities.
For more information on the ProtoArray line of products, please visit ProtoArray Central at www.invitrogen.com/protoarray. <<
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Not sure how directly this competes.
Cheers, Tuck |
