Cambridge, MA, June 20, 2001—BioTrove, Inc. announced today that it has
received a $1.99M Advanced
Technology Program (ATP) award from the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST). The award will fund engineering efforts related
to BioTrove's Living Chip™ technology platform for Massively Parallel
Screening including optimization of chip production processes, development
of associated detectors and robotics and demonstration of the chips' utility
in screening phage display libraries of human single chain antibody fragments.
"We are pleased to be funded by NIST's prestigious Advanced Technology
Program to develop the Living Chip™ technology. The ATP funding enables
further development of our ultra-high throughput chemical and biochemical
analysis platform to address widespread commercial applications in drug
discovery, biotechnology and materials discovery," said Dr. Colin Brenan,
C.E.O. and a co-founder of BioTrove.
"The Living Chip™ technology provides
an elegant, powerful new approach to performing microscale chemistry and
biology. This funding will accelerate the development of the chips, the
associated robotics and the implementation of powerful, massively parallel
biological screens, " continued Dr. Tanya Kanigan, Director of Chip Technology
and a co-founder of BioTrove.
The Living Chip™ exploits micro-scale phenomenon to move, mix and
separate small volumes of liquids. The number of samples that can be simultaneously
processed with a single chip are orders of magnitude higher than competing
technologies.
The Living Chip™ consists of a precisely constructed, high density
arrays of micro-channels, or bottomless wells, in a plate. The Living
Chip™ may be thought of as a dense array of test-tubes that are easily
filled and washed. The system combines the advantages of high density
arrays on glass slides, with the added functionality that liquids and
gases may easily pass into and out of the channels. Living Chip™
systems will have 100,000 or more channels. Proprietary processes are
used to treat the surfaces of the arrays to make the top and bottom faces
hydrophobic and the channel interiors hydrophilic. Fluids may be instantaneously
loaded into the chip by dipping and held there by means of surface tension.
By aligning and stacking a second chip on top of the first one, mixing
of reagents may be performed on a large number of samples simultaneously,
thus accomplishing massively parallel initiation of reactions. Inhomogeneous
assays may be performed by immobilizing compounds inside the channels
and taking advantage of the flow-through nature of the Living Chip™.
Reactions may be monitored in parallel by a variety of means including
colorometric, fluorometric or luminescent readout.
The ATP funded research will culminate in a Massively Parallel Screening
of single-chain human antibody display libraries. BioTrove will demonstrate
the ability to screen display libraries after only one round of panning
and with the goal of bypassing the panning process altogether. The Living
ChipT will allow screening of one million or more samples per day, thus
accessing a greater diversity than previously possible. The repertoire
of antibodies screened will exceed that produced by the human immune system.
BioTrove also plans to screen for function of the antibodies rather than
just for binding affinity, potentially leading to more valuable therapeutic
antibodies.
There are many other applications for the Living Chip™ technology
include Massively Parallel Screening for enzyme and cell-based drug screening
assays and rapid, sensitive genomic and proteomic assays. Combinatorial
biology libraries including industrial enzyme libraries are readily screened,
with the goal of reaching one billion assays per day. Compound libraries
or genetic libraries may easily be stored in the chips with the advantage
of low reagent consumption and easy integration into Massively Parallel
Screening.
About the Advanced Technology Program:
The Advanced Technology Program, managed by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, provides cost-shared funding to industry for
high-risk R&D projects with the potential to spark important, broad-based
economic benefits for the United States. The awards are made on the basis
of a rigorous peer-reviewed selection process. For more information, consult
the ATP web site, www.atp.nist.gov.
About BioTrove:
BioTrove, Inc. was founded in 1997 as Advanced Instrumentation Systems,
L.L.C. BioTrove has two core technology platforms: The
Living Chip™, exclusively licensed from M.I.T., and a second microfluidic
high-throughput screening platform under development with a corporate
partner. The BioTrove team includes engineers within the disciplines of
mechanical, chemical, software, biomedical and optical engineering and
scientists with expertise in diversity biology, enzymology, toxicology,
analytical chemistry, materials and surface science. BioTrove offers both
screening services based on the core technology as well as advanced instrumentation
to corporate partners. BioTrove's mid-term goal is to provide a solution
to screening at rates approaching one billion samples per day in nanoliter
volumes.
For more information contact:
Colin Brenan, C.E.O.
Robert Hess, V.P. Business Development
John Linton, V.P. Technology
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