Forget cloning, try sloning
million to help it commercialise new technologies in
fully-automated gene synthesis.
Germany's Sloning BioTechnology is to receive grants totalling more than €1 million to help it commercialise new technologies in fully-automated gene synthesis.
The company has been awarded €538,000 from the Bavarian State Ministry of Economics, Transport and Technology and €606,000 from the German government to advance its technology platform, which is based on a novel method of assembling nucleic acids. In April, the company closed a funding round that raised €4.3 million.
Based on a library of standardised building blocks, the approach, called Sloning, enables the production of any gene or large DNA molecule about 10 times faster and cheaper than conventional procedures based on gene cloning, according to the company.
The nucleic acids can be combined independently of their individual sequence so there is no need for insert restriction sites. Sloning also allows parallel synthesis of several gene variants and has an inherent error correction to boost accuracy and fidelity.
"The funding confirms the potential that our enabling technology holds," commented Dr. Octavian Schatz, the company's chief executive and chief scientific officer. He noted that Sloning marks the start of the industrialisation of DNA synthesis and predicted that it would ultimately replace cloning.
The company believes that while automated high throughput sequencing paved the way for modern biotechnology, Sloning will take it a step further to a truly functional level; allowing scientists to exploit the huge potential coming from detailed analyses and optimisation of sequences obtained from the Human Genome Project.
Sloning will help the pharmaceutical industry significantly cut development expenses for drug and gene-based products, e.g. optimised vaccines, better and safer vectors, novel multi-functional biologicals and enhanced industrial enzymes, according to the firm.
Last year, Sloning BioTechnology partnered with HAMILTON Bonaduz of Switzerland to integrate the Sloning technology into the fully automated SLONOmat platform.
