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Biotech / Medical : Aurora Biosciences (ABSC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boyce Burge who wrote (46)	1/7/1998 3:38:00 PM
From: Boyce Burge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 359

More good news from ABSC, front page of Science! But. I Also discovered that many VC backers unloaded their ABSC holdings thru H&Q last month. Several multimillion dollar transactions. I think these are swaps between one institutional owner and another, and so dont show up in daily volume. Bad news, business as usual?? I dont know. Company Press Release Aurora Biosciences Announces Publication In Science Of Novel Fluorescence Assay Technology SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 1998--Aurora Biosciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ABSC - news) Wednesday announced the publication in Science, Vol. 279, Jan. 2, 1998, of an article titled ''Quantitation of Transcription and Clonal Selection of Single Living Cells with beta-Lactamase as Reporter.'' The first author is Gregor Zlokarnik, Ph.D., principal chemist at Aurora; five other authors are Aurora scientists, and the senior author is Roger Y. Tsien, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California San Diego, and scientific advisor to Aurora. The initial development of the beta-lactamase reporter system was conducted in Dr. Tsien's laboratory at UCSD, and Aurora has an exclusive license to this technology from the Regents of the University of California. The beta-lactamase reporter system is an advance over existing, well-established reporter genes, such as chloramphenicol acetyltransferase or luciferase, because it provides extremely sensitive readouts from single living human cells. Many important genes are expressed only at low levels and can be difficult or impossible to study with previous reporters. Changes in gene expression can be visualized by a change from green to blue fluorescence in the living cell. The authors of the Science paper point out that the beta-lactamase reporter system will facilitate many applications including expression cloning of genes that can modulate transcription, functional genomics in human cells by gene trapping, and creating cell-based screenings for novel pharmaceutical targets. ''We are delighted that one of Aurora's proprietary fluorescent assay technologies has been considered an important enough advance to merit publication in Science and to provide the illustration for the front cover of the first issue of the journal in 1998,'' commented J. Gordon Foulkes, Ph.D., Aurora's chief technical officer. ''Previous reporter gene systems have been important tools in cell biology, and in pharmaceutical drug discovery. An ability with this new reporter to rapidly isolate a few living cells expressing a particular gene from millions of cells (clonal selection) is a significant advance. The beta-lactamase system also enables rapid incorporation of newly discovered genes into cell-based assays for high-throughput screening of several important classes of drug targets, such as hormone and neurotransmitter receptors.'' Aurora designs and develops proprietary drug discovery systems, services and technologies to accelerate and enhance the discovery of new medicines. Aurora is developing an integrated technology platform composed of a portfolio of proprietary fluorescent assay technologies and an ultra-high throughput screening system designed to allow assay miniaturization and to overcome many of the limitations associated with the traditional drug discovery process. The company believes that this platform will enable Aurora and its collaborators to take advantage of the opportunities created by recent advances in genomics and combinatorial chemistry that have generated many new therapeutic targets and an abundance of new, small molecule compounds. Current collaborators include Merck & Co., Warner-Lambert Co. [NYSE:WLA - news], Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Co. [NYSE:LLY - news], Roche Bioscience, Sequana Therapeutics Inc. [Nasdaq:SQNA - news], and Allelix Biopharmaceuticals Inc.