Procognia and Hamilton enter array deal
collaboration, which focuses on the automated growth and handling
of Procognia's functional human protein arrays.
Protein arrays - in which hundreds of samples are added to a single slide -are used to test protein expression levels, protein-protein interactions or the protein-binding patterns of small-molecule drugs, and have emerged as an important new tool in proteomics.
Procognia has developed proprietary tag technology to create the first arrays of biologically related human proteins that retain their functions in the array format. The first protein array in Procognia's pipeline of products will contain wild type human p53 and its important germline single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants.
The p53 protein is implicated in most cancers when its normal function to suppress tumour growth is reduced or lost through variation in its sequence. Procognia's SNP variant proteins will be the first tools that enable researchers to investigate the mechanism of cancer progression on many proteins in parallel.
Procognia is growing the proteins in insect cells rather than in bacteria to insure that the post translational modifications of the proteins are more similar to those of humans. Under the terms of the agreement, Hamilton's Microlab STAR will handle the large number of cultures during protein production.
"Hamilton has provided a solution to Procognia's robotics needs. This system will meet the productivity demand of our aggressive pipeline of biologically related proteins" said Ron Long, CEO of Procognia
Procognia has also developed and is marketing a lectin array based platform that enables the high throughput, automated analysis monitoring of protein glycosylation.
Glycosylation is the major post translational modification of protein drugs, and is a difficult aspect to analyse, monitor and control during the discovery and development of biologic medicines. Procognia's glycoanalysis monitoring technology will increase the probability of success of glycoprotein drugs.
This latest deal,of which no financial details were disclosed, sees Sigma Aldrich become the main distributor of these arrays. In November last year, Procognia entered into this deal in which Sigma Aldrich marketed novel arrays of functional human proteins developed by Procognia. The agreement expands Sigma-Aldrich's pipeline of products for the advancement of proteomic research.
Procognia and >Hamilton enter a market that is expected to boom over the next two years. Market analyst Business Communications Company (BCC) estimated the protein array market to be $90 million (€83million) in 2002
BCC estimates that by 2007, growing at an average annual growth rate of 30 per cent, total revenues are forecast to approach $336 million. BCC attributes the growth rate to the large boom in protein array products launched onto the market in 2001 and 2002, as well as the anticipation of future products and technology breakthroughs during the next five years.
The market is currently awash with manufacturers showing off its protein array products, increasing competition but bringing down price. In addition the need to be the market leader in this field has forced the progress of companies, continually evolving the technology. Currently, the main players are Amersham Biosciences, Procognia and US company, Invitrogen.
