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Biotech / Medical : PROTEOMICS -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jongmans who wrote (31)	5/16/2000 4:01:00 PM
From: nigel bates	Respond to of 539

forgot to post - May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- CuraGen Corporation (Nasdaq: CRGN - news), an integrated genomics based drug discovery and development company, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted CuraGen a patent covering specific aspects of PathCalling(TM), the Company's high-throughput technology for conducting protein analyses on a genome-wide scale. Specifically, patent number 6,057,101 covers the use of the widely validated yeast two-hybrid system in an ultra high-throughput manner, which enables CuraGen and its collaborators to identify protein-protein interactions across entire genomes. Understanding how genes and their proteins function is a critical step in understanding the involvement of genes in the onset of disease and for identifying the best targets for drug intervention. ``This patent enhances CuraGen's ability to leverage the nearly completed human genome on a scale never before possible,'' stated Jonathan M. Rothberg, Ph.D., Founder, Chairman, and CEO of CuraGen Corporation. PathCalling(TM) is designed to conduct high-throughput proteomic analyses on a genome-wide scale, instead of one gene at a time, in order to determine how genes and their proteins function within the context of disease. The ability to patent the functional protein interactions of a gene is recognized by the USPTO, as demonstrated by two patents that were issued to CuraGen earlier this year covering human protein interactions that have been implicated in the division and proliferation of cancer cells. ``Having a gene's sequence is only the first step. True knowledge of disease genes comes from understanding how those genes and their proteins function,'' added Dr. Rothberg. CuraGen's PathCalling(TM) technology was recently applied to identify the protein interactions within the yeast genome. This demonstration of genome-wide protein analyses was outlined in the February 10th edition of the journal Nature. Upon completion of the yeast genome, CuraGen entered into collaboration with the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project (BDGP) and Gerald Rubin, Ph.D., Director of the BDGP and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to identify the protein interactions and functionally annotate the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Since then, COR Therapeutics has expanded their collaboration with CuraGen to include access to this robust technology. The identification of protein interactions within biological pathways is a critical step in the discovery of drug targets. CuraGen has developed its high-throughput PathCalling(TM) proteomics technology to screen libraries of genes for the purpose of identifying protein interactions, and to further understand how genes function in relation to disease. PathCalling(TM) is fully integrated with CuraGen's suite of functional genomic technologies, which includes SeqCalling(TM) for identifying gene sequences and genetic variations (cSNPs), and GeneCalling(TM) for conducting gene expression and pharmacogenomic analyses. Each of these technologies is accessible over the Internet through the GeneScape(TM) portal. CuraGen has utilized its PathCalling technology to develop a database containing greater than 10,000 protein interactions. The Company is applying PathCalling(TM) to screen genes located within proprietary and publicly available databases, in order to accelerate the selection and validation of novel drug targets and to gain a greater understanding of how disease-related genes function.