Invitrogen licenses protein chip technology

The license rights allow Invitrogen the use of more than 30 patents in the area of protein microarray development from biotechnology company Zyomyx. Invitrogen additionally gain exclusive rights to intellectual property covering a wide range of development processes for those protein microarrays that utilize detection modalities.

The current shift from genome projects to an emphasis on studying proteins and protein function on a system wide, or proteome, scale is increasingly being taken seriously by the industry. It is particularly important for pharmaceutical firms since proteins make up the majority of therapeutic targets.

The licensed intellectual property agreement includes design features and slide chemistries, enabling Invitrogen to develop additional applications for its protein microarrays. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Invitrogen's acquisition of Protometrix, earlier this year and the recent market introduction of its human protein microarrays have increased the company's strategic interest in further strengthening its intellectual property position in what is expected to be a high growth field.

In November this year, Invitrogen Corporation unveiled the world's first commercially available microarray optimized for maximally functional proteins, the ProtoArray Human Protein Microarray, which was an indication on Invitrogen's part to provide a tool to accelerate target identification and study off target effects to help reduce failure rates.

Gregory Lucier, CEO of Invitrogen​ has been quoted as saying: "ProtoArray technology has the potential to jumpstart the growth of the protein array market, that could mirror the growth of the highly-successful DNA microarray segment."​

In addition, the life sciences company continued its acquisitive streak, paying $35 million (€27.5m) for the UK firm, DNA Research Innovations, specialising in nucleic acid purification technologies in October this year.

The acquisitions adds to acquired companies Molecular Probes, BioReliance and Xeotron. According to Kalorama, the company has achieved more than 10-fold growth over the last five years as a result of this strategy,

Commenting on the latest deal with Zyomyx, Lucier said: "Zyomyx was one of the first companies to create protein arrays in a microchip format and was active from its earliest days in filing a large number of important patent applications."​

By licensing rights from relevant Zyomyx intellectual property, researchers from Invitrogen hope to develop proprietary processes and applications for its protein microarrays

"The Zyomyx development processes are very complementary to our ProtoArray products,"​ Lucier added.