GENEART AG announced in a Tuesday press release that it has been granted patent EP 1913140 entitled “Verfahren für die kontinuierliche, zielgerichtete Evolution von Proteinen in vitro” (Method for carrying out the selective evolution of proteins in vitro) by the European Patent Office.

The patent protects a procedure for the selective identification of improved protein variants (so-called evolution) in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.

The German patent of this family of patents had been granted as early as 2007. An application for a comparable protection for North America has been filed under the international patent process.

The patent constitutes the basis for a proprietary technology platform, which allows to significantly improve the efficiency and activity of protein-based therapeutics, vaccines and industrial enzymes.

The new technology relies on a continuous one-step process where the generation and screening of protein variants run virtually simultaneously.

The procedure allows identifying optimal variants of a protein from a considerably larger pool much quicker than with conventional multi-stage processes.

Therefore, this procedure increases the probability of identifying the ideal protein variant, for example a strong-binding antibody for cancer therapy.

In 2000, GENEART entered the gene synthesis market and has since become the global market leader. Today, the company is one of the leading specialists in the Synthetic Biology field.
 

SOURCE:AGIPNEWS